The World at War
by darkphoneix
Summary: The sequel to my first finished work, Can It Get Any Worse, The World at War details Ranma's search for a cure for the posion that afflicts Ami.
1. Prologue

  
The World at War: Prologue  
  
Three months have I searched, three months have I wondered an Asia  
decimated by newly arisen barbarism, and in that three months, not  
even so much as a glimmer of a cure has surfaced. Sure, I've run  
across other Talented people, some even reasonably powerful, this is a  
land of ancient mysticism and spiritual awareness, but none have been   
able to tellme anything I didn't already know about the poison that kept   
me from my Ami.  
  
Sometimes I would run across a bastion of peace, a small valley, too  
isolated to be in danger, maybe one where a sorcerer had made himself  
at home, but mostly, whenever I found someplace where people were  
relatively safe and well fed, those people had banded together into  
militia type units. They fought off the bandits and thieves that such  
a drastic societal change can create.  
  
It was at one such town, a sizable affair of nearly three thousand  
people, that I'd been confronted by the Elders and Commanders in  
charge of the place. I'd thought at first they would attempt to press  
me into service for them, it'd happened, unsuccesfully, before. Not  
this time. They knew I was coming. How? They had a precognizant  
child living within the walled city. At least they're not so bad as  
psychics.  
  
"Please, your Mightiness," begged the Elder in charge, a wiry little  
man with no air and watery eyes,"we will be crushed without your  
help." He was referring to an approaching attack force from the  
Alliance. I'd taken the time to listen to his story because I was  
starting to miss hearing Japanese, even if my Chinese was steadily  
improving.  
  
Why not? Maybe there would be some Amazons in this group. I nodded,  
pulling the old guy to his feet. The senshi wouldn't be bothered with  
this kind of thing. They probably wouldn't have participated anyway,  
but the powers that be that even knew about them, namely Cologne,  
were smart enough to keep them and their pokemon in reserve for when  
such high numbers had to be fought that too many mundane warriors could  
be lost."Just stop the begging, please." It was embarassing.  
  
I was led, parade-like, through the dirt streets of the town. I  
couldn't help but admire the amount of work done to turn the place  
into a defensible retreat. Walls may keep out wild animals and men  
with clubs, but they were useless against the type of warriors  
produced by Jusendo.  
  
A few hours of being treated like a king were all I could stand. I  
made my departure from the hastily thrown together celebration as  
politely possible. These people would be feeding me for a time, and I  
didn't want to needlessly offend them.  
  
****  
  
There wasn't much of a wait. An endless stream of pretty girls kept  
my bed warm at night, may Ami forgive me, and I spent most of the  
daylight hours cooking up nasty little one use enchantments that would  
permanently turn Amazon women into Amazon men. I'd probably be able  
to hear the screams of agony from here when they try to cure their  
warriors with the cursed water of Jusenkyo. Setsuna's ring had  
finally yielded its knowledge to me and I was making use of it to  
torment the Amazons every chance I got, a sort of poetic justice. By  
my last count, just under three hundred had been transformed.  
  
There were a few more complicated spell constructs that would be able  
to turn the wings of the Phoenix People into lead and to use their  
crossbred DNA to drive the Musk into killing frenzies(they always went  
after other Musk when that happened). Each construct was simple, a  
small glass bead, but it would be the most effective weapon my  
benefactors would ever have against the Alliance.  
  
Two weeks, four days, and three hours after I'd been asked to fight  
for the town, it was attacked by a joint force of Phoenix People,  
Musk, and Amazons. The attack came at midday, not the best time for a  
raid.  
  
Each faction of the Alliance fought differently. Saffron's people  
always chose to dive at high speed, levelling off rapidly and leaving  
trenches carved in the Earth where the vaccum force generated by chi  
strengthened wings struck. The more talented of the winged warriors   
didn't need this action to produce the deadly attack, but dove anyway,   
launching from their wings a combination of enchanted steel feathers   
and more accurate vacuum blades that they could specifically target   
their victims with.  
  
The Musk preferred to use the extremes, brute strength, raw speed, or  
sheer power. Their strong warriors were never just big, they were  
huge, and they simply smashed through any defenses erected before them  
and crushed any type of offense. The fast Musk were typically small,  
both short and thin, and some could nearly rival the Amazon Elders and me  
in speed. Give one of them enough knives or a good sword, and  
they could reek absolute havoc within enemy ranks. When it came to  
power, the cousins and siblings of Herb, all with lower amounts of the  
dragon blood within their veins that gave them their huge chi force,  
simply stand around and lob energy blasts, blowing up anything in their   
path.  
  
Amazons were all skilled. Their strength and speed, on average, was  
less than that of the Musk, but the combination of what they had with  
that skill made them the equals, if not betters of any other non-  
ruling warrior in the Alliance. When an Amazon learned the tribe's  
secret techniques, she gained, temporarily, the speed of a speed bred  
Musk with the kacchu tenshin amaguriken. The bakusai tenketsu  
increased their endurance to nearly that of the Musk powerhouses and  
the ability to explode solid, non-living matter almost made up for the  
difference in strength. Chi training, though not enough to bring most  
Amazon warriors up to the dragon descended Musk, was used widely  
enough that the greater number of chi using Amazons could equal the  
fewer, if more powerful Musk royalty.  
  
The people designated to handle the enchantmented weapons, held their  
ground, using up the stored energy within each bead. Amazons who were  
affected, when they realized they'd had the wammie put on them,  
started screaming in terror and became pretty much useless. Phoenix  
People fell from the sky like stones, smashing into the ground with   
pleasing splats. The Musk started howling and eating each other.  
  
That left about three hundred warriors, all of superhuman ability, for  
me to deal with. Not the easiest thing to do when you consider that I  
was inside of a walled town and could only defend one area at a time.  
  
****  
  
I took to the air after a near miss from a trio of extremely powerful  
chi blasts. They wouldn't have gotten through my shields, but I  
didn't feel like getting battered around by that much concussive  
force. My clothes were literally saturated with the blood of my  
victims and in there were tears and slashes in the cloth where a few  
enchanted weapons had gotten through my shields. That had prompted a  
reworking of my shields so that I didn't get a mystic arrow in the  
back.  
  
There weren't really all that many Alliance soldiers left. Those that  
remained were arrayed around me. The Musk only had a few royal  
descendents, the Phoenix People had the most remaining, almost a  
dozen, and one of them was a moderately powerful sorcerer. The sole  
Amazon was, to my suprise, an Elder. What was an Elder doing  
attacking a relatively useless town in the middle of China? For that  
matter, what were seven, four of whom were now dead, of Herb's cousins  
doing here? I didn't know enough about the organization of their  
forces or Talented to non-Talented ratio of the Phoenix People, but  
I'd guess that there was significantly higher number of heavy hitters  
in the ranks that was common.  
  
Well, it looked like I'd have to spare one of them long enough to find  
out what was going on. I smiled at the Elder, a gesture barely  
discernable through the distortion of the heavy battle aura and dense  
shields I was maintaining."Do they still scream?" I asked."Or has  
someone put them out of their misery yet?" My choice to leave Jusendo  
had been prompted as much by a desire to help Ami as the need to  
separate myself from those who I had destroyed. I never have felt  
'guilty' about what I did, but definitely uncomfortable.  
  
The Elder, one of the few who had remained silent as I'd laid down the  
rules all those months ago, gasped as realization came to her. Ahh,  
she knew who I was, and she was scared. The Elder began to step back,  
steadily gathering and focussing as much chi into an impending strike  
as she could. I looked her in the eyes, never breaking the line of  
sight, even as I deflected a series of concentrated energy bolts  
designed to strip away my shields. The sorcerer responsible for the  
attempt didn't get a chance for another spell. I used the back trail  
created by the attack to force enough energy into the Phoenix Person  
to permanently sere the Talent from his soul.  
  
"DIE!!!" roared the Elder, now glowing a bright yellowish-orange. Her  
impressive aura flowed across her lithe body and coalesced into bright  
spheres of power that she launched at me. The attack was powerful,  
truly worthy of an Elder of the Amazon Nation, but, fully aware of it,   
I was able to redirect its power. I channelled the captured chi energy  
through the enchanted sword held at my side and used it to  
incenerate the three Musk. Not a drop of my own power wasted.  
  
Exhausted by the ill prepared attack, the Elder collapsed to the burnt  
grass. She would be my unwilling informant soon enough. I turned my  
attention to the Phoenix People. None of them had attacked me, yet,  
not even while my back was turned, but they couldn't be allowed to  
survive. No one could know that it was I who had destroyed this  
force and several others. The safety of the senshi and the  
others from Japan depended on it.  
  
The fallen sorcerer clutched his head between his hands and rocked  
back and forth on the ground, weeping. I sympathized with the guy, I  
really did, but he shouldn't have tried to kill me. The ten warriors,  
four glowing with battle aura and at least one of them a member of the  
elite soliders who had those magic steel feathers, formed a barrier   
between me and the sorcerer. I ignited my spell, a type of fire that   
only destroys living matter. The screams were horrible as the winged men   
and women slowly turned to ash. When it was over, nothing remained in   
the area except for myself and the unconscious Elder, who I had protected   
from the magical fire  
  
True, I could have used some other, less painful, method, but I wanted  
to get some of the enchanted feathers carried by that one guy, and the  
other enchanted weaponry I'd spotted among the warriors without  
damaging it. The quality and strength of the enchantments and the  
enchanted material itself had improved dramatically a little over a  
month after the war started. Just out of curiousity, I wanted to know  
why.  
  
****  
  
"Are you sure this will work?" Akane asked Kasumi. The Tendo sisters  
were living in the countryside, far from any other humans, and the  
lack of men and electricity had been devastating, to say the least.  
  
Kasumi nodded enthusiastically, happy to finally be getting some from  
someone besides herself or her sisters."Oh yes, he's just wonderful.  
It's a little unusual at first, what with all the hair, but  
I think you'll enjoy him just as much as I did."  
  
Akane and Nabiki were following their sister through the woods,  
supposedly to meet with a man that would be able to satisfy them all.  
The two younger Tendos wouldn't have believe anyone else, but this was  
Kasumi, and she had been practically glowing when she's stumbled into  
the camp, barely able to walk.  
  
She led her sisters around a bend in the trail and into a small  
clearing. Waiting for them there, was a giant panda. It was munching  
lazily on a stalk of bamboo, but when it saw the three girls, hastily  
climbed to its feet, its hind legs actually, and began looking cute.  
  
"Isn't he great?" Kasumi asked, running up to the giant panda and  
hugging him fiercely. She made sure to give his dick a good hard  
squeeze so he'd know what he was in for.  
  
Nabiki and Akane exchanged glances, shook their heads, and were about  
to tell Kasumi that she had gone absolutely insane, when from the  
panda's waist, grew an enormous dick. They nearly gagged on their own  
tongues before they could gain control of themselves.  
  
Was a panda really so bad? They were gentle creatures, and from all  
Nabiki had heard, very loyal. It appeared to be very intelligent and  
its sheer bulk would scare off the majority of predators, human or  
beast. Then, there was that giant piece of meat...  
  
Akane had to count backwards from ten, repeatedly, to keep the  
fantasies from intruding on her mind so heavily that she couldn't  
think. Leave it to Kasumi to be the lucky one, getting to break in  
this wonderful animal.  
  
****  
  
Genma Saotome shook his head minutely, careful not to give away more  
than he should. The schools would be joined, no matter what he had to  
sacrifice. He would live with the girls, help them any way he could,  
and when the time came, reveal his true identity. By then, they would  
be dependent upon him for more than just sex, they wouldn't be able to  
survive in this harsher world without him.  
  
If Ranma wouldn't do his duty, Genma would. Besides, if the other  
girls were only a fraction as good a lay as Kasumi, he was in for  
quite a vacation.  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: Here's the first part of 'The World ar War'. From  
here on out, Ranma will be meeting new people, helping some, and  
killing many, many more. He'll be moving on to Russia in the next few  
chapters, and I am going to have him meet the first of some of the  
characters submitted to me by my readers(this one is your's, Ginne).  
I've been thinking, and decided that I wanted to try to bring Resident  
Evil into this as more than just a cameo appearance. I'm not sure if  
it will work out, but having genetic mutations within the populations  
of the world due to an uncurable virus could be fun. I never finished  
the first game(stupid memory card burnt out and I was too lazy to go  
through the whole game again) and have only read one of the books, so  
any info on Umbrella and anything else about the world of Resident  
Evil would be a big help. Finally, I'm gonna stop taking character  
submissions in a week. I appreciate all your help, but my mailbox is  
getting hard to check. C&C me at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com  
  
P.S.- CIGAW was my first finished work, ever! Yay!  



	2. Chapter 1

  
The World at War: Chapter 1  
  
Through means best left unmentioned, I managed to extract a great deal  
of information from my captured Elder before putting her to the knife,  
or the magical equivalent. Seems that this town was simply a rallying  
point for the three factions before they began a trip into Russia to  
gather up a load of enchanted weaponry created for them by a powerful  
sorcerer. I also discovered the source of payment for the  
transaction. Hidden, about a kilometer from the town, within a small  
copse of trees, was a large wooden trunk. It was bound in iron and a  
number of fairly decent protective wards, containing crumbling four  
tomes of magic, an ancient athame that bore the aura of long and heavy  
use, and a sack of extremely valuable gems. They weren't valuable for  
their monetary worth, though their size and quality was impressive.  
These were the kinds of gems that had been in contact with places of  
power for thousands upon thousands of years.  
  
The tomes were useless to me, not being able to read, or even  
recognize, the language they were written in, and the athame wasn't  
stable enough to be trusted with the kinds and levels of power I was  
accustommed to(not to mention that Xochial's athame put this one to  
shame). The gems, they would stay with me. Thinking about them made  
me shake my head. To have gathered such a collection of nearly  
priceless objects together, the Alliance must be expecting a major  
product.  
  
I'd gotten vague directions from the Elder, but they would be good  
enough to get me close enough to reliably use magic to find the  
Artificer. Anyone capable of dealing on equal footing with the  
Alliance was worth checking out. The man may even have a cure for my  
Ami.  
  
****  
  
"And the latest probe?" Bill Gates asked. The so-called Wizard of  
Gates(he'd only taken that title so others would think him insane, and  
therefore easy to manipulate, double cross, etc...) sat in the command  
chair of the Microsoft Lunar Testing Center. Through holographic  
displays, he recieved constant streams of information from satellites  
orbiting the Earth and Moon.  
  
The petite young woman that sat far to his right behind a touch screen  
console replied,"The results are the same, sir. We can get visuals of  
the surface easily enough, but as soon as atmospheric contact is made,  
all communication ceases. Other probes and satellite feeds indicate  
that like the others, the probe lost all descent control and broke up  
on re-entry."  
  
Bill frowned. His quantum computer(explained in the author's notes),  
B.A.S.C(Big Ass Super Computer), had predicted a global conflict, but  
the actual reality went beyond just war. The world, was, for all  
practical purposes, in the stone age. How B.A.S.C. had come up with  
even a hint of the war that was slowly spreading throughout China,  
Bill didn't know, but it had and he was glad he'd acted. The  
resources of the U.S. had been more than enough to establish a lunar  
base and the natural deposits of titanium and materials able to be  
turned into a sturdy concrete had aided in rapid construction.  
  
Even now, in two automated consturction facilities, plans were being  
carried out to manufacture the first in a series of Humanoid Vehicular  
Exoskeletons. The H.V.E.'s were constructed mainly from the titanium  
variant found in large deposits on the moon and their weaponry  
included the latest in particle beam and magnetic levitation through  
manipulation of Earth's energy fields. A sizable portion of  
B.A.S.C.'s computing power was turned to discovering a way for the  
Gundams, as Bill referred to them(a reference from a favorite anime of  
his), to operate in the altered conditons on Earth that had rendered  
its technology useless.  
  
"Very well. From this day forth, I want bi-weekly insertion attempts  
by the probes. All information will be fed directly to B.A.S.C." If  
all went as planned, Bill expected the computer to have found an  
adequate counter to the anti-technology field shortly after the  
Gundams went online.  
  
****  
  
"Kijin Raishu Dan!" I recognized the attack as I heard it shouted, but  
not the voice of its user. Had the fat bastard gotten the balls to  
teach his 'forbidden' techniques to someone? Well, that was a stupid  
question.  
  
The building that I stood before was large, but that was only the  
visible portion. I could sense, through distortions in the Earth's  
energy patterns, that the structure extended far into the mountainside  
that it rested against. No roads led to it, and there appeared to  
never have been a road. Weird.  
  
I shrugged that little mystery aside and leapt from the top of the  
large bouler I'd been standing on, using a trace of levitation to  
carry me above the 20 odd stories of the building. I could not see  
nor probe past the shiny black material used for windows. Gravel  
crunched under my heavy boots as I landed on the roof.  
  
Littered around the roof of the mysterious building were a number of  
things that should not have existed. The large dobermens, they would  
have been expected, except that they were running towards a Japanese  
man no more than three years older than myself, and they were dead.  
Three zombies also shuffled towards the man. There were dozens of  
them already down, some immobile and others crawling weakly through  
the gravel. The man, a powerful and skilled martial artist, was  
fighting a demon. The demon easily topped thirteen feet. Its spiked  
and taloned arms were disproportionately large when compared to the  
rest of its massive frame, and the creatures skin looked like  
partially melted wax mixed with chords of exposed muscle.  
  
What's unusual about this, besides a lot of zombies and a demon?  
Quite simple, really. There wasn't a bit of magic in any of them.  
I'm not a practitioner of necromancy, it's a vile art for the weak  
willed, but I have sufficient knowledge in the area to know that you  
can't animate any kind of corpse without necromatic energies  
channelled through a living sorcerer(does very strange and ugly things  
to that sorcerer). The human and canine zombies had never been  
exposed to nercomancy. They shouldn't be anything more than rotting  
worm food. That demon, it also had no magic. All demons possess  
innate magic, they can't exist without it.  
  
Answer. Those weren't zombies and that wasn't a demon. This place  
was starting to get on my nerves. Oops, they just spotted me. The  
zombies weren't worth bothering with. Those that decided to eat me  
instead of the martial artist(another mystery) didn't get to enjoy  
being undead for very long. They might not be mystical in origin, but  
a little dose of white magic and the sons of bitches turned into  
pretty little piles of dust.  
  
Not constantly harrassed by lesser foes, that martial artist made  
quick work of the not-demon. I watched with interest as he kept his  
distance and steadily widdled away pieces of the creature. He avoided  
coming in contact with any of its blood, going so far as to flash his  
battle aura into intense heat whenever the black ooze sprayed too  
widely for him to easily dodge. The poisonous property of the blood  
was a good enough explanation for why the man hadn't used any of the  
Yama-sen-ken's direct physical attacks.  
  
A little more than a minute after arriving, I witnessed the demon-like  
creature collapse in on itself, becoming little more than a puddle of  
steaming black and red ichor. The martial artist, his fight over,  
seemed to come out of a daze. He looked around and was obviously  
suprised that there were no living dead waiting to feast on his brain.  
  
I whistled, catching his attention. Without taking a chance to see  
who I was, the martial artist turned, flinging a vaccum blade in my  
direction. The attack met my shields and dissipated harmlessly. Now  
that I could see the man's face, the exhaustion of fighting off so  
many attackers was clear. That last blade had cost him whatever small  
reserves he had left. Time for another good deed.  
  
****  
  
The martial artist possessed a fairly high level of Talent, so I was  
able to infuse enough energy into him to heal any minor injuries he'd  
taken and bring him around within minutes. He sat up, shaking his  
head groggily, and attempted to stand.  
  
I'd put as much distance between us and the creature infested building  
as I could in five minutes."Mind telling me what in Hell those things  
were back there?" I asked. His eyes focussed on me and he assumed a  
deceptively tight fighting stance."Oh please, you couldn't fight of a  
kitten right now, man. Just sit down and tell me what it was you were  
fighting back there."  
  
Warily, the man sat down across from me, the small fire I'd built  
forming a barrier between us."Who are you?" he asked suspisciously.  
He'd just been through some rough shit so it wouldn't hurt to tell the  
guy.  
  
"I'm Ranma. I saved you from the zombies. Now, tell me what that  
place is and why there were zombies and demons running around." Though  
he had the Talent, this man hadn't been trained in its use at all. He  
wouldn't have known that he was fighting unnatural undead, if the  
undead can be said to ever be natural.  
  
His voice edged with the kind of mental exhaustion brought on by  
constant stress, he began,"I'm Ryu Kumon, special operative for the  
JSDF. Roughly three months ago, I was sent on a mission to infiltrate  
and destroy the Umbrella installation where you found me. I was  
chosen specifically for my...special abilities. In route to the  
rendezvous point with my contact, my chopper went down and ever since  
then I've been unable to get a satellite uplink with HQ and I've found  
nothing of any technological sophistication that actually works. My  
weapons won't even discharge. Knowing the importance of my assignment  
to the entire free world, I chose to continue the mission. I finally  
arrived last week. Without proper navigation equipment, and with the  
GPS down, the trip took much longer than expected." His eyes were  
haunted, those of a man who had seen too much. I know the look, I  
still get it sometimes when I think of Ami.  
  
"Umbrella, what is that?" I asked. I was getting one of those bad  
feelings. The kind that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand  
up, stretch their legs, and run away.  
  
Ryu shrugged."I'm not entirely sure. All I was told was that they  
were some sort of secret world wide organization bent on global  
domination. There are dozens of those, though. Umbrella ranked  
special attention because they had the means to possibly succeed.  
Their scientists have developed a series of viral mutagens that can be  
used to reanimate the dead by restoring nervous function and  
forcefully awakening primitive parts of the brain, or if allowed to  
properly incubate, develop living biological weapons possessing  
qualities from several natural species." That's some fucked up shit.  
Damned idiots. No wonder I couldn't detect any magic in the zombies  
or the demon."The beast that gave me so much trouble earlier was a  
frightened scientist just a couple days ago. He'd been using a type  
of enormous electric jelly-fish to maintain enough power within the  
facility to contain the experimental subjects, but the jelly fish died  
last week of side effects from exposure to the mutagen. When the  
storage and containment fields went down, he was infected with a new  
strain of the mutagenic virus. In less than twenty four hours he grew  
into that...thing." Damn. It's mass had been easily ten times that of  
almost any man. Such a growth rate was frightening, and would have  
been moreso if I'd not watched Demon literally grow before my eyes.  
  
Uh oh. I threw up my shields, keying them to specifically screen out  
anything but clean air. My eyes rolled back in my head as I scanned  
my body for any irregular activity that could indicate a viral  
infection. None, I was clean. I relaxed, and saw that Ryu was giving  
me the eye."Sorry, just making sure I'm not infected with whatever it  
is you're talking about." Still with the eye."It's sorta like a  
martial arts technique," I explained. That seemed to suit him well  
enough.  
  
Without the huge amounts of energy that I kept stored within my body,  
Ryu was much easier to scan. Almost immediately, I found more than  
just an irregularity. The guy wasn't infected, no, his immune system  
was at least as strong as mine. Ryu was a cyborg of some kind, a very  
advanced one if he was able to survive in today's less than perfect  
world."What school do you practice?" Ryu asked, not really caring  
whether I answered or not. Jeeze, this guy is almost as bad as Ryoga.  
  
Without really thinking, I answered,"Saotome School of Anything Goes  
Martal Arts. That's what I was originally taught anyway. I've picked  
up quite a few styles in the past decade." I was still preoccupied  
with solving the problem presented to me by Ryu. How 'was' he  
surviving?  
  
I looked up as I heard rocks scraping, expecting to see a zombie or  
something similar. Instead, obscured faintly by firelight, Ryu Kumon  
stood once again, glowing with a faint battle aura and once again  
taking the familiar Yama-sen-ken stance."Saotome!" he hissed.  
  
Before this could get out of hand, I exerted my will, forcing the  
martial atist back to the ground. His eyes were wild and threatened  
to roll out of his head when he found he could not longer control his  
body."Calm down, damnit!" Another fine mess courtesy of the bastard.  
"What did my father do to you?" I asked, mentally adding this to the  
very long list of reasons to torture my father."I don't have any money  
if he stole something that belonged to you, not that money is much  
good nowadays."  
  
"You're the son of Genma Saotome?" the older man grated from between  
clenched teeth. At least he'd had the sense to kill his battle aura.  
  
  
I nodded."Not by choice, but yes, he is my father. It's been a few  
years since I saw him last, though. He was running away from me at  
the time. Idiot tried to sell me to a Chinese circus." 'That' one was  
going to get Genma a skinning.  
  
Ryu's expression seemed less anger now and more curiousity. He didn't  
attempt to kill me when I released the pressure of inverted shields  
from him, so I continued,"Does this have anything to do with you using  
the Yama-sen-ken? He didn't steal it from your family, did he?" Was  
the man put on this Earth for the sole purpose of pissing off the  
entire human race?  
  
Ryu shook his head."No, he didn't steal the techniques. He gave them  
to my father without warning him of the danger of practicing them. My  
father died when our dojo collapsed on him as a result of your  
father's carelessness." Genma couldn't have possibly done that out of  
charity. A round about way to kill off a rival? Possibly.  
  
"Sorry, man. I feel for ya, I really do." He couldn't possibly know  
what it was to truly lose someone you care for more than your own  
life.  
"My father is an idiot, honorless, ugly, the scum of the Earth..." I  
didn't stop for about five minutes. When my little lecture was over,  
Ryu was smiling faintly and the only negative emotion he was feeling  
was a weak regret.  
  
"At first I spent years looking for Genma Saotome, to take the Umi-  
sen-ken and revenge from him, but then there was the explosion and my  
priorities changed. Now, I guess I've found the other half of the  
forbidden techniques and I won't live to learn them." Gloomy.  
  
"The explosion, is that why you're a cyborg?" Before he could ask how  
I knew, I said,"Magic, true magic." He swallowed that pill much easier  
than I'd expected.  
  
The man nodded."It wasn't just an explosion. The truck was carrying  
sulfiric acid. The government was only able to save 35% of my body.  
The rest is life support equipment covered over with biomimetic alloys  
and poly-ceramic armor. My main power source has been dead ever since  
my chopper went down. I've been supplementing the back-up fuel cells  
with my own chi, but that won't work but a couple more days." Ouch.  
Who knew the government was good for something, afterall?  
  
"Your fuel cells have been working for the last few months, though?"  
That shouldn't have been possible. Then again, Ryu shouldn't be alive  
at the moment.  
  
"Yeah. It's some kind of bioelectric battery. Fighting my way out of  
the Umbrella installation has pretty much drained the remaining power  
from it." Hell, if his body still worked, even with the technology  
dampening field of Saffron's, why not try to keep it running.  
Ami...if I ever found a cure for her, could probably find lots of uses  
for that kind of technology.  
  
Ryu was Talented, at least at the level of the senshi, and would, with  
instruction, eventually be able to keep himself running, but for now,  
I'd have to play generator. I reached into my spatial pocket and drew  
out a perfect, marble sized yellow diamond. It was one of those the  
Alliance had sent as payment for their new toys and I'd planned on  
giving it to Makoto in a couple decades when this whole mess was over.  
  
  
"Remember, magic," I responded to the unasked question as Ryu watched  
in complete fascination while I worked. I used my athame to carve the  
elemental symbols of air into the diamonds surface(yep, it's much  
harder than any diamond), empowering it with an enormous electrical  
charge. Full night had taken hold when I finished. The yellow gem  
glowed with a greenish-white light and floated an inch above my palm.  
  
"It'll give you electricity for a while, but I don't know how much  
your body needs or at what level it needs it. If what you say is  
true, though, it's your only chance at survival." I passed the gem to  
Ryu.  
  
The older man held the glowing diamond reverently. He stood up and  
took his brown and green camo shirt off. Without any visible action,  
he caused a three inch square hole to open in the his chest, the  
realistic skin parting at an invisible seam. Within the small cavity,  
a short and thin cylinder filled with a luminescent green liquid  
hovered. Ryu took a deep breath and snatched the cylinder from his  
chest, replacing it with my diamond in the same motion.  
  
I didn't really have much hope for him to do more than start smoking  
and explode, but after a couple minutes of rigid inactivity, he sighed  
and the panel closed, the skin resealing and looking unbroken.  
  
Ryu shook his head in wonder."I don't know how you did it, but I'm  
back at full power. That little rock gives off more power than my  
original, but I can handle it." He pulled me to my feet and shook my  
hand vigorously.  
  
Yes, yes, I know. I'm such a good person that I leave trails of  
blooming flowers in my wake. Hmmm, I really could do that. Ranma the  
Messiah. Nah, I hear the All Mighty frowns on that kind of thing.  
Anyway, back to the moment."No problem, just don't get in my way and  
we'll get along fine."  
  
"Huh?" I guess I should explain.  
  
"That thing won't last forever, and you'd better believe that you  
won't be able to find any of your old batteries that actually works,  
for a long, long while." I hate it when people look at me like I'm an  
idiot.  
"Trust me on this. In the entire world, you're the only piece of  
technology that isn't a paperweight." And that was only true because  
of Ryu's chi control and latent Talent, I suspected."The reason for it  
is that a guy got hold of some powerful magic and turned it loose.  
Now technology is dead for a hundred years. You have the ability to  
learn magic and if you want to survive, you're gonna have to let me  
teach you." Okay, I've gotten used to teaching. I wouldn't really  
mind the company of another martial artist all that much, either.  
  
"Magic? I can't say that it doesn't exist, not after the last hour,  
but learning magic, I don't know." Please don't be one of those purist  
assholes. I've run across them every so often. They always want to  
use just martial arts or just magic. So few people seem to understand  
that when taken to the higher levels, the two disciplines compliment  
each other immensely.  
  
"I won't force it on you, though you'll die without the knowledge. I  
guess I could teach you the Umi-sen-ken too. Anything to piss the old  
man off."  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: I know that this Ryu Kumon is way different than  
canon, but this one had been through some major shit, you know, the  
character building kind. I'm planning on him having some really cool  
weapons built into his body that will be revealed next chapter. Sigh,  
no one sent in any Resident Evil info, so I'm gonna have to do the  
research myself. Send C&C to me at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com  
  
  
About B.A.S.C.- I'm not entirely sure about the theory of quantum  
computers, but it goes something like this. Since a quantum particle  
can and does exist in more than one place at any given time, a comuter  
that could use a quantum processor like the cpu of a normal computer  
could run trillions(if not more) of equations in the time it takes  
todays fastest computers to run one. That translates to a whole hell  
of a lot of power. B.A.S.C. would not only be able to possess an A.I.  
of some kind, it should be able to decipher the meaning of life, the  
purpose of the universe, and God's last name.  



	3. Chapter 2

  
  
The World at War: Chapter 2  
  
I sighed, rubbing my temples slowly to relieve a headache that was  
quickly becoming a migraine. Ryu wasn't a bad guy, he even had a lot  
in common with me, at least as much as any one person can, but he  
absolutely would not give up on the idea of completing his mission. I  
was almost ready to believe that he had somehow been programmed to  
take out the Umbrella building.  
  
"I have to do this, Ranma. If the viral agents stored within that  
facility are released into the atmosphere the world will be ravaged by  
monsters and civilization will cease to exist!" Ryu shouted. Fully  
energized and no longer using his chi just to stay active, Ryu Kumon  
had a chi force at least as strong as mine. He couldn't properly use  
it, only knowing the Yama-sen-ken and a rudimentary chi bolt maneuver,  
but it was there, and the martial artist wasn't attempting to restrain  
it.  
  
"Newsflash, the world is already ravaged by monsters and civilization  
went down the tubes about three months ago. This virus you talk  
about, the one that makes monsters and zombies, has already been  
released into the atmosphere. Remember all those zombies and the  
monster yesterday? You exploded quite a few of them. The winds up on  
top of the building were higher than average, more than powerful  
enough to spread out infected blood over long distances." Hell, if  
things kept getting worse, the remaining people of the world might  
turn to the Alliance willingly, just for protection.  
  
Ryu's mouth gaped open, but he snapped it shut and said,"You don't  
know that for sure. The virus may not take hold long enough to spread  
from just those zombies. The Umbrella installation has to be  
destroyed or the virus will definitely spread. You haven't seen the  
labs, Ranma, there are warehouse sized caverns full of nothing but  
incubation tubes with monsters like the one I fought yesterday.  
Thousands upon thousands of them." Maybe he was just an idiot and not  
really programmed to do this.  
  
"Fine then. So, how are you going to destroy the place? Last time I  
checked, NOTHING that goes boom went boom. I don't suppose you're  
going to walk up to all the zombies and ask them to tear it down for  
you." I have all intentions of transporting that entire mountain into  
space, but the idiot wants to go inside and do it himself, alone.  
  
Looking sheepish for the first time, Ryu said,"I was hoping you could  
teach me some magic, you know, something that would blow it up?"  
  
I shook my head disbelievingly. This guy was unreal."One day you'll  
be powerful, but your power is several orders of magnitude below what  
would be required to cast such a spell." I wasn't about to tell him  
that he actually could one day destroy the mountain, he didn't need to  
know that now. I didn't want the place destroyed, that left too many  
chances for something to survive. I wanted it 'gone'.  
  
Ryu remained silent. I continued,"You see? I have the capability to  
do the job, so I'll do it."  
  
****  
  
Teleporting a mountain is the kind of thing I don't like to do(I have  
done it before, though), but the alternatives, mainly Earth as zombie  
heaven, didn't sound very fun. The kind of work involved in  
transporting a mountain as large as this one was more than I felt like  
doing. In this day and age you just can't let yourself become  
exhausted, not and remain intact and breathing. So, I didn't do the  
work, I used a couple of crystals in my possession that made me the  
most powerful being on this planet(that thought just makes me feel all  
warm and fuzzy inside).  
  
In one powerful grab, I appropriated an enormous amount of raw energy  
from the Silver Imperium Crystal and used the lens crystal of my own  
creation to focus and shape that energy into a space warping spell.  
Katya, the older, wiser, more beautiful, and less insane sister of  
Setsuna a.k.a Sailor Pluto, a spatial mage and the other Senshi of  
Pluto, had taught me the spell and I'd pretty much worked out all the  
bugs. I wouldn't use it to transport myself with anything more than a  
few hundreds kilos of mass for a few more years, but that wasn't  
likely to be a requirement either.  
  
"Wha-?" was all that Ryu managed to get out before the giant whole in  
reality formed above the mountain and sucked it and a large part of  
the surrounding forest into space. If I'd been doing this unaided,  
I'd have drawn a complex spell pattern and been left exhausted for  
hours. Shit, I'd better start relying more on more on personal power  
or my reserves would begin to atrophy.  
  
Unlike the first time, where I had inadvertently drawn the senshi and  
myself into another dimension along with a small mountain, this one  
didn't leave behind a super smooth surface. There was, instead, an  
enormous chunk taken out of the Earth, leaving a gaping crater-like  
maw.  
  
Along the jagged edge of the crater, large rooms and storage areas  
remained undamaged. Within some of those rooms I could see the  
incubation tubes mentioned by Ryu. Most of the rooms, though, held  
zombies that wondered around aimlessly, cages that housed a several  
varieties of mutant and undead creatures, and broken equipment. At  
least Ryu would get a chance to complete his mission, sorta.  
  
"Hey, Ryu, wanna see who's the most accurate?" I asked. Of course the  
entire inner area of the crater would have to be incinerated, but for  
now nothing was going to escape that hadn't already done so.  
  
"Huh?" I think the whole disappearing mountain thing had adled him a  
bit.  
  
I snapped my fingers in his face a couple times until his eyes  
unglazed, then repeated,"I asked you if you wanted to see who could  
blow up the most zombies from here." I wasn't going to use magic, if  
that's what you're wondering. I wanted the guy to at least have  
something of a chance.  
  
Ryu grinned, all signs of shock, sullenness, and anger gone."None of  
that magic crap?" I nodded, reminding myself to pound the value of  
magic into Ryu sometime in the near future.  
  
By the time we found an area that would allow us to cover the most  
ground, some of the skinless ape creatures were scampering up the side  
of the crater. They had a good distance to climb, still, but we  
agreed to pick them off first.  
  
I unleashed my chi, letting it burn around me in a tight, liquid-like  
battle aura, while constraining the energy with my will so that none  
of it would be wasted. The effect was that I became barely  
recognizable as anything but a glowing green and gold humanoid shape.  
Also, I began to gather excess chi from nature, carefully screening  
out any magic that almost always came with it. I'd agreed to no  
magic, but Ryu was going to get one hell of a demonstration.  
  
Ryu was more straight forward. He crossed his arms over his chest and  
they were enveloped in a dark bluish-purple aura. He must have  
thought that by limiting the chi burn to his arms that he was saving  
energy, and in a way, he was, but that also kept him from building up  
a much larger charge or queing a series of attacks into his aura. As  
his arms uncrossed, the forearms split into three sections and  
expanded outward about three inches. The battle aura flowed between  
them heavily but I could still see the metallic innards of Ryu's  
cybernetic body. From the central section of the mechanism, a black  
bar of metal began to pulse, eventually turning into a steadily  
glowing white light.  
  
I didn't ask what exactly was happening. I'd only agreed on not using  
magic. Oh well, maybe this will be a better game than I'd thought.  
  
Ryu may have some powerful tech on his side, but he doesn't have the  
knowledge or skill to equal a true master. I decided to fill him in  
on that real quick. My first attack came in the form of a pair of  
energy blasts, each connected to the other by a thin filament of chi.  
Moments before slamming into a single skinless ape, the two spheres  
rocketed away from each other, still connected by the chord. The chi  
filament bissected four of the ape things at various levels and the  
main attacks smashed into the rock wall, raining debris and ape pieces  
down on other ape things. Total: 10  
  
I looked to Ryu and saw him shake his head in what I like to think of  
as wonder. His attack was a variant of the kijin raishu dan, a much  
larger and stronger one. I'm not totally sure, but it appeared as if  
he used the vacuum of the blade to encase a large amount of non-  
magically harnessed plasma. The now white hot blade of energy,  
slammed into the wall, vaporizing three of the creatures instantly and  
killing eight more in the ensuing fall of debris and quick flowing  
motlen rock. Total: 11.  
  
My next attempt created a thermal void and sucked all the heat from a  
dozen of the ape things, freezing them solid. The shock wave created  
by such a rapid atmospheric change shattered the frozen mutations.  
Ryu next targetted an outcropping of rock directly above a large pack  
of ape things. This time his attack was a girating cable of chi that  
he held in check and guided with some kind of force generated by the  
mechanism within his arms. That got him a dozen. Damnit, I don't  
intend to lose.  
  
Concussion wave. 13. Weird metallic disk of death. 12. Ah ha, a tie!  
That pretty much took care of the wall crawlers. Far below, zombies  
were gnawing on one another and undead pooches were getting the  
stuffing beat out of them by giant monsters that resembled the one Ryu  
had fought.  
  
The next hour rapidly degenerated into a cosmic pissing contest.  
Behind by three, with the sun just about to set over the horizon, I  
lost my patience and performed the mother of all bakusai tenketsus.  
Mother doesn't really describe the cave in that followed. I had to  
jump to safety, followed closely by Ryu, as the much abused wall of  
the crater collapsed inward, throwing up a mushroom cloud of dust.  
When it settled, thanks to a little help from moi, there wasn't much  
more than a lake-sized dimple in the ground to identify the resting  
place of lots of nasty little things.  
  
"Guess I win, eh?" I asked, allowing myself to gloat a bit. It had  
been fun, a true test of skill. I just had more skills.  
  
"You sure that last one wasn't magic?" Ryu asked. With all the super  
weapons he had pulled out, Ryu shouldn't have cared if I used a little  
magic.  
  
"No magic, just something I learned from the Amazons."  
  
****  
  
As we travelled through the wilderness of China, I passed the time by  
either teaching Ryu magic or teaching him to fight. There wasn't  
really that much else to do. The war was far enough behind us that  
the only hope of meeting an Alliance force would be if they were  
coming for their stuff. The few villages we passed through were  
little more than patches of firm ground in between rice paddies and  
their inhabitants didn't come across as friendly, taking careful aim  
as they did to kill us with their bows.  
  
Ryu himself, aside from teaching him, was an entertainment. The  
Japanese government had built so many different weapons into his body  
that just watching him try to form a martial arts style that would  
incorporate them could become a fire works display. I also studied  
him. If they could make one, though Ryu was most likely the strongest  
by far, there could be others, even if it was unlikely they were  
capable of moving.  
  
I'd sent Demon with a warning to Usagi about Umbrella and the danger  
posed by the remnants of their experimentation. The pokemon had  
returned slightly scorched and battle weary, but the message had  
gotten through and the senshi were prepared. Heh, I'll bet Saffron  
won't mess with Demon again, not after their first encounter.  
  
"So, who's the chick, Ranma?" Ryu asked. I was flying low, nearly  
skimming the trees and the cybernetic martial artist was hovering  
right along. He couldn't fly yet, but he knew enough to augment the  
magnetic jump thrusters throughout his body to simulate the feat.  
  
"Huh?" I'd been thinking about Ami and all the things I could have  
done to those who had harmed her if only I'd been in my right mind. I  
looked over at him innocently.  
  
Ryu snorted."Please, don't deny it. I've seen the way you zone out  
every so often. You may not know it, but sometimes your eyes start to  
glow and you give off 'pissed' vibes. I know the signs. My dad was  
the same way when mom got killed." Ryu wasn't stupid, despite his  
behavior all those weeks ago. For his benefit, I'd decided that he  
had been programmed to take out the installation.  
  
I shrugged."Some Amazons tried to kill me. They got Ami instead.  
Right now I've got her frozen in a stasis spell until I can find a  
cure for the magically constucted poison she was exposed to." Here I  
go, getting depressed again. Bastard, why couldn't he mind his own  
business?  
  
Ryu didn't want to mind his business and he didn't let the matter  
drop. "Amazons? I thought you were all buddy buddy with them." Fine.  
If he wanted to know, then I'd tell him.  
  
"I was, but then they decided to take over the world. I decided to  
take over their takeover and some of them didn't like it. The ones  
that are still alive are constantly reliving a demonic gangrape.  
Their souls, well their souls would probably much rather be in hell  
right now." I'm not too sure about that one. If I tried, I could most  
likely get the Dark Prince to see to them personally. Next time I  
talk with him, I'll bring it up.  
  
"Ah...that's nice. Shit! I mean it's bad that Ami got hurt, but it  
is nice that you got them back. Yeah, that's it. I hear demons are  
very thorough." Ryu nodded vigorously. I'm Ranma Saotome, and I  
strike fear in the hearts of some of the world's most powerful men.  
Grin.  
  
"Yeah, nice."  
  
****  
  
Xochial wasn't your typical Demon Lord. Typical being large, dripping  
explosive slime, and the screams of tortured souls escaping from every  
orifice. No, Xochial wasn't typical, but he was one ugly  
motherfucker. My mentor stood at just under eight feet tall and his  
entire frame resembled nothing more than a snake that had grown arms  
and legs. His body truly was that thin, and looked as if it would  
break into little pieces if exposed to a good breeze. Nothing could  
be farther from the truth. Xochial was almost pure magic, dark magic,  
but still magic.  
  
I wouldn't have dreamed of facing him in his own realm, but even on my  
own plane and equipped with the artifacts I possess, I still wouldn't  
wager in my favor if such a fight ever came to pass(50/50 isn't bad,  
but I'm not gonna bet for myself with odds that could swing either way  
so easily). He was currently scanning the vial of poison from which  
Ami's plight originated. I knew he wouldn't be able to offer a cure,  
it wasn't within his power to effect the lighter magicks, but it  
didn't hurt to let him look.  
  
Ryu had quickly, but with admirable discretion, slipped away when my  
old friend appeared before us. I'd lost track of him after he covered  
a few kilometers.  
  
"Quality work," hissed Xochial, his jaw moving up and down without any  
sign of hinged motion."The child's soul, the one used to lock the  
spell, was also Talented," the Demon Lord continued."That gives it  
potency and power, but also a weakness."  
  
I perked up at this announcement. I felt like bitch slapping myself.  
If I had only sought out Xochial earlier, I could have saved months of  
wasted time."A weakness?" I asked hopefully.  
  
The snake-like head bobbed once."Yes, a small weakness, but a weakness  
nonetheless. A normal soul would have been consumed within decades by  
the posion's power, but a Talented soul adapts to the power and  
becomes twisted by it. If you were to remove the factor which gives  
the soul its Talent, the poison within your woman would become  
powerless within a century." The demon who had helped raised me, who  
had somehow found it within his black heart not to eat me when I had  
asked for his tutelage, handed the small vial back to me.  
  
I nodded once in return, all the appreciation Xochial would except  
without getting weepy(you wouldn't believe me if I told you). I  
reached into my crowded spatial pocket and drew out the ancient tomes  
I'd stolen from the Amazons and one of the gems. The tomes wouldn't  
travel across the dimensional barriers, but the gem, a black diamond  
useful in death spells, would."Could you give these to the Dark Prince  
when you see him?" I still think his name is Escobar. I passed the  
books to Xochial, then the gem."It's not really my kind of thing, you  
keep it."  
  
Xochial nodded again, and in a puff of sulfuricly reeking smoke,  
disappeared.  
  
****  
  
Contemplating how I was supposed to remove the Talent from a  
disembodied soul, I went in search of Ryu. I had to travel for nearly  
two hours before I could even pick up so much as a hint of his  
location.  
  
The martial artist was in a clearing, shredding a large pine tree with  
those metal tentacles that he could extend from his palms. He's the  
swiss army knife of cyborgs.  
  
"How could you stand to be around that thing?" Ryu asked without  
preamble. I could almost see his synthetic skin crawling with  
revulsion. I couldn't blame the guy, Demon Lords and their kin do  
have rather disturbing auras. Then again, so do I.  
  
I shrugged, taking a seat on a piece of log that moments before had  
been a living tree."Xochial and I go back a long way. He's sorta like  
my big brother." Ryu's eyes, probably synthetic too, threatened to  
pop.  
  
"Don't worry about it, he takes getting used to. He told me a way to  
help cure Ami, though, so I'm not complaining." Sure, if I felt like  
waiting a century to revive her.  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: I'm going to cut this a bit short due to the  
monstrous headache I've got. I didn't mention it in the fic, but  
don't you think that Umbrella has lots of other bases around the  
world? There are other companies that worked with the T-virus and G-  
virus, too, so they too must have had such labs. Now that there is no  
way to contain their biological menaces, I wonder how long it will  
take for the world to get even more fucked up.  
  
Send C&C to dark_phoneix@hotmail.com  
  
Thanks for your character submissions, all of you who entered them. I  
may not be able to use them, since I have to try to fit them into the  
story as it forms within my head, but I appreciate the effort. Anyone  
who wishes to submit a charcater, sorry, you're kinda late. I have  
plenty to work with. Maybe I can use them for something else someday  
so keep any you've got already saved. 


	4. Chapter 3

  
The World at War: Chapter 3  
  
"Sir, I've lost all contact with Lunar Orbiters 3-9," said a tall,  
well-endowed redhead from behind the console. She looked over to Bill  
Gates and asked,"What should we do, sir?"  
  
Bill Gates glanced to the young technician."Have outer sensors  
registered any unusual energy patterns?" he asked. On his right-hand  
touch pad, he began keying in the codes for the bases defensive  
particle cannons. You can never be too prepared.  
  
After a moment, the technician said,"No, sir, nothing out of the  
ordinary." She paused."I've just rerouted visual control to my panel."  
She manipulated a grounded track ball and the screen in front of her  
began rapidly skimming through images. When she found the one she  
desired, she used her other hand, this one encased within a sensor  
lined glove, to interact with a hologram projected to her left.  
  
The screen zoomed in from a blurry image to that of the lunar  
landscape. Several miles above the surface, an enormous asteroid  
floated, inevitably approaching the moon."Bring it in closer," Bill  
ordered. The resolution again sharpened and trees could be seen  
imbedded within the mountain. Trees?!  
  
Bill took personal control of the satellite drone and manuveured it in  
closer. Seen from the right angle, the asteroid looked very much like  
a mountain that had been torn from the Earth. Floating around the  
newborn asteroid were several decaying humans, all of whom were moving  
around. The fact that they were obviously dead, yet still flailing  
around helplessly was more than enough to disturb the genius. There  
were also a number of...things, things that were big and didn't have  
much trouble moving through space. They used floating debris to jump  
around the asteroid. None of the creatures seemed effected by the  
hazards of space.  
  
"Sensors are indicating wildly fluctuating bio-readings, sir,"  
announced the technician, a slight waver in her voice. To herself,  
she feared that they were being invaded by aliens.  
  
Bill nodded, seeing the source of those bio-readings. What exactly  
was going on? This couldn't have come from Earth recently, not with  
the planet's current problem, but those things couldn't have been  
exposed to the vacuum of space for long, no matter how ghoulish they  
were. A secret government space facility? If so, it wasn't American  
in origin.  
  
"What is the status of the H.V.E. pilots?" Bill asked. The first  
half-dozen gundams were complete and all testing of their combat  
abilities and weaponry had been performed without a hitch. Several  
pilots were already trained to the peak of human performance. The  
only obstacle to a reclaimation of Earth was the production of the  
dimensional flux generators that B.A.S.C. had developed to negate the  
unusual energy that had encompassed Earth.  
  
The flux generators were based on a Japanese design for a costly  
energy containment system, but when properly modified and attuned to a  
specific alloy, the flux created electrical energy that could be used  
within Earth's disruption field. It took three of the satellite-based  
generators to keep a Gundam fully powered(the generators themselves  
could not function unless in a total vaccum and were too bulky to  
equip the Gundams with them) no matter its location, but currently  
only seven of the generators were finished.  
  
Once eighteen of the devices were completed, enough to power the first  
Gundam squad, Bill planned to launch them to Earth to begin setting up  
recievers that would allow the flux transmission to power Earthbound  
facilities. For now, though, the Gundams would work fine in space,  
their fusion reactors fully operational.  
  
Another pause."Ready to go, sir. Hyato, suffering a mild concussion,  
wishes to remain grounded."  
  
Bill nodded and said,"Very well. I want Vulcan Beam modules and Smart  
Rocket racks equipped on each H.V.E." Using a sub-vocal command, Bill  
brough up an inventory of weapons stored within his armory."High yield  
atomics also, three a piece. Inform them that B.A.S.C. will give them  
the coordinates of the detonation areas once current extraterrestrial  
threat is eliminated."  
  
****  
  
Squad leader Mamoru Chiba hurriedly slipped into his G-suit, donning  
his helmet and pressurizing it to round out his newest costume.  
Trapped in America during the Gates Uprising, Mamoru had adapted,  
going over to the side that would obviously come out victorious in  
hopes of surviving to one day see his beloved Usagi again. He'd  
volunteered to take a place on the Lunar Base as a way to get into the  
Wizard of Gates' good graces, but found himself trapped on the moon  
after the world went dark.  
  
He'd nearly broke down, then, when he thought of his love, his  
precious Usagi fighting for survival in the chaotic mess that existed  
far below him. Chosen by B.A.S.C. to become a pilot for the robotic  
armor developed by the Wizard, Tusedo Mask poured himself into the  
effort of learning to pilot the remarkable machines. If he became  
good enough, he would be able to save Usagi, eventually. She would  
survive, she had to. They were destined to be together.  
  
"Yo, Chiba, you ready, man?" asked his second in command.  
  
From behind the silvered safety shield of his helmet, Mamoru nodded.  
They proceeded to the H.V.E. bay and waited while the automated  
systems armed and outfitted their vehicles. As the robotic drones  
floated around the bay, their gravity not augmented by the complexes  
graviton emitters, they attached some of the more potent weapons to  
the H.V.E.s. Mamoru noticed the black and yellow cylinders indicating  
nuclear payloads on some of the items. What could they possibly be  
doing with something so dangerous that he and his men had barely been  
trained to handle.  
  
****  
  
Meanwhile, on Earth.  
  
Genma had enjoyed himself greatly over the last month. Sure, Nodoka  
had been practically insatiable, but even she had her limits. With  
the Tendo sisters, he had to worry more about 'his' limits. With  
their constant hunger for sex, he got very little sleep and had lost  
nearly fifty pounds. For a giant, fat panda, his figure was starting  
to look amazingly trim. Little-Genma had seen better days, but that  
new lubricant Kasumi had started making from those crushed herbs was  
working wonders for all the heat rash and friction burns.  
  
Right now, though, Genma wasn't all that happy. Where the girls had  
gotten heavy gauge chain from, he didn't know, and he didn't really  
think that iron shackles were all that common nowadays either, but  
they had, and now he was bound on his back, spread eagled against a  
tree. He looked imploringly to Kasumi, his eyes shining with unshed  
tears.  
  
Kasumi smiled at her panda and said,"P-chan, you'll feel much better  
when we get all this fur off of you. You won't be so hot all the time  
and the girls and I are getting a little annoyed with all the panda  
hair that keeps getting stuck in our teeth." Kasumi didn't want to  
upset her plaything any further by telling him that Akane had  
complained that her whips and other assorted implements went unfelt by  
P-chan because of his fur. Sigh, the things she did for family.  
  
With a last whimper, Genma shut his eyes as Kasumi began to trim away  
his luscious fur coat. His last glimpse for several hours being  
Akane, standing behind her sister with a mug of soap and a straight  
razor. Three different whips rested, coiled, within her hip holder.  
  
****  
  
"What are you doing?" I asked Ryu. I'd had to change course midflight  
to catch up with the cyborg as he had deviated from his path. I'd  
found him near the crashed remains of a helicopter. This must have  
been his ride that'd went down when Saffron used the tech dampener.  
  
Ryu ripped a twisted armor plate from the chopper's frame and breathed  
a sigh of satisfaction."It's still here," he said. Like there was  
much chance of whatever 'it' was just up and disappearing if it was  
held behind an inch thick piece of steel.  
  
I waited patiently, perusing the wreckage of Ryu's chopper. It'd been  
small and completely black, coated with some kind of non-reflective  
material."So?" I finally asked.  
  
Ryu'd just finished strapping an advanced looking metallic case/box to  
his back. It looked like it was designed to rest there and was  
probably something else more advanced than your modern every day super  
computer.  
  
"Weapons upgrade and armor modules," replied my student, the  
cybernetic, martial artist, sorcerer. Damn, what a mouthful.  
  
I was beginning to be reminded of a cartoon I'd once seen down in hell  
that was being used to torture some child rapist or something. I  
believe it was called Inspector Gadget. Ugh, almost as bad as Barney.  
"Well, if you've gotten all your toys, do you mind if we get a move  
on?" I asked exasperatedly. It was getting about time to bring out  
Demon for a few hours. Ryu always got quite and respectful for a few  
days after getting sight of my monstrous pokemon. Nah, I should save  
that up for later. He could build an immunity up to the effect,  
afterall.  
  
Our liesurely pace brought us back within the embattled territories  
already claimed by the Alliance and we soon met the first Alliance  
force I'd seen since the one where I'd killed that Elder. This one  
was much smaller, numbering barely over fifty, but none of the  
warriors were anything less than battle tested veterans and they had  
the skill to prove it. Unfortunately, for them, not us, Ryu and I  
aren't your run of the mill ass kickers.  
  
I contented myself with blasting the Amazons around the muddy meadow,  
never empowering my spells to the level that they would become fatal.  
The rest I left for Ryu. I hadn't seen him in actual combat with his  
full abilities active and now was as good a time to learn as any.  
  
Needlessly, for these opponents didn't really require such force, Ryu  
activated that upgrade pack he always wore. The result was an  
animeish looking knight with floating orbs full of power orbitting  
him. He didn't play around with his foes, and with little more than a  
oversized chi/plasma bolt, he incinerated the Musk and Phoenix People  
who were trying to kill him. So much for seeing any full abilities.  
  
"We're starting to wander," I announced after the 'fight'."I need to  
get to Russia to meet that guy the Alliance contracted. The sooner  
the better." Right now the best I could hope for was a roundabout cure  
for Ami involving a century without her, but the sooner I got that  
poison de-souled, the sooner I got my Ami back.  
  
"Hey, I'm just following you around," Ryu pointed out. As his grasp  
of magic and control over his chi improved, Ryu was becoming ever more  
formidable and I also saw him as a more reliable companion, someone to  
watch my back if the need ever arose. With all his gadgets, we made  
up the most powerful force of destruction on this or any other planet  
that I knew of.  
  
I nodded, wordlessly levitating a few hundred feet into the sky,  
joined shortly by a Ryu who no longer needed his body's enhancements  
to fly.  
  
****  
  
Hmmm, provided that Ryu had the equipment for the job, he and Makoto  
would make a good couple. Yes, their powers would combine nicely with  
a very high probability of producing a Talented offspring. What am I  
thinking? Well, it involves the future, the very, very distant  
future.  
  
Anyway, on to more important matters. My vision enhanced both by  
naturally sharpened senses and a couple quick cantrips, I scouted out  
the abandoned military base deep within the Siberian Steppes. That  
there was a military base here wasn't much of a suprise, that this was  
the place the Alliance party had been heading to pick up a large  
shipment of enchanted items was. I could feel the misty haze that was  
the omnipresent force of magic throughout the world thickening in the  
air above the collection of buildings and the unused airstrip.  
  
I keyed my senses to strictly mystical and almost took an involuntary  
step back. Talk about tight! This place had so many layered wards  
weaved around and through it that for me to enter without permission,  
I'd practically have to tear it into little pieces. The outer fence  
served as a template for a series of interlocking force shields, very  
much like those I kept in place reflexively. Those alone would keep  
out anything short of an Elder, a Phoenix Sorcerer, or a Musk noble.  
  
From that point on back, the protections became increasingly powerful  
and complex, right up till the end where a demon summoning was held in  
stasis, to be activated by a powerful intruder. Oooo, it was a nasty  
one, too. Now would be the time to say,'Screw it,' and pack up if I  
didn't also feel that the sorcerer who cast the enchantments was, in  
way of strength, little above middling. That wasn't really too  
obvious unless one knew to look for steadily stepped up power levels  
indicative of slow buildups in energy.  
  
Still, this sorcerer was more than Talented in the traditional sense.  
He had to be sub-Talented too, an Artificer definitely. I have many  
sub-Talents, mainly my ability to learn new magic and my unusual  
strength itself being a sub-Talent. I'm even something of an  
Artificer myself, if a poor one. If I were lucky, I would soon be  
meeting a true master Artificer, someone who I could truly treat as an  
absolute equal.  
  
****  
  
Ryu had to be left behind. I wasn't sure what effects the almost  
unreal level of enchantments would have on his makeshift power source.  
It was just as well, really. The last thing I needed was for the guy  
to let his technology fetish run away with him and try to take  
something that belonged to someone who could with a mental snap of his  
fingers, turn loose a potential Demon Lord on the poor fool(it takes  
the death of a Demon Lord and about ten thousand years of fighting for  
a new Demon Lord to come to power).  
  
The fence didn't even attempt to stop me, so heavily programmed that  
it knew its eforts would be futile. I passed through, over, or under  
about thirty more varying wards before they began putting up  
resistance. Instead of bulling my way through, which would have been  
unpolite and explosive, I opened gaps in the wards where I could and  
teleported past the ones that would have raised undue alarm. Finally,  
within four meters of the disguised summoning ring, I stopped, waiting  
for the arrival of my host. By now, he'd almost certainly felt my  
presence.  
  
"Welcome," said an illusion as it appeared before me. It was about an  
inch shorter than me, wearing wire-rimmed glasses with small lenses,  
and the face presented by the illusion was weathered, yet not old.  
  
"Hey," I answered, not one for formal bullshit. The illusion was  
good, better than I could pull off, better, I suspected, than any  
human I'd ever met before could pull off. It felt solid, partially  
anyway. Damn, it is solid!  
  
"Can I help you?" the more than illusory illusion asked. It sounded  
pretty casual, even though I'd just about barged on through the front  
door.  
  
Might as well get to the point."Sure. I ran into an Alliance force, I  
assume you know what that means, and then I killed them all. I got  
some info from one of the Elders about their mission. I decided to  
come see what was so special about a sorcerer out in the middle of  
nowhere that I'd never heard of."  
  
The illusion nodded and replied,"The Jusendo Alliance placed a rather  
sizable order several months ago, just before the collapse of  
technology. And now that you've seen me, or at least this portion of  
me?" Portion? Where was it that I'd heard that reference before? Ah,  
yes, astral projection. That was a psychic skill, not something at  
all suited to magic, yet here it was, an astral projection combined  
with magic. Cool.  
  
I shrugged."I still have some of the stuff they were going to pay you  
with, along with a collection of items you may be interested in that  
I've picked up over the last few months. Maybe you have something  
that I'm interested in." This was a golden opportunity. I'd be a fool  
and a true Saotome to turn it down."And I'd like to ask you a few  
questions about Talent."  
  
Nodding, the illusion waved its arm and directly in my path a small  
circle appeared. Carved into the concrete, I recognized it as a  
teleportation gate. I readied my own version of the spell and a few  
quick spells encase this was a trap. Stepping into the circle, I felt  
momentarily disoriented, then the world went dark.  
  
****  
  
The sensation passed and light returned moments later. I was standing  
in a large subterranean cavern that had been carved from the bedrock.  
Electric lights, lights that still worked, hung from the ceiling by  
the dozen, creating a star-like effect.  
  
Standing where the illusion had been, was the real thing. He didn't  
feel any different aurally, and his emotions were now accessible. He  
didn't harbor any ill will towards me for disrupting his arrangement  
with the Alliance. That's good.  
  
He extended his hand and introduced himself,"Hong Zhoung."  
  
I took his hand and replied,"Ranma Saotome." My name caused a quick  
raising of Hong's eyebrows. Hmm, he'd heard of me. I wonder if that  
is a good or bad thing.  
  
I followed the older man over to comfortable sofa where drinks and  
snacks had been set on a dark wooded coffee table."Before we do  
business, what would you like to ask me of Talent? I can see that you  
don't need instruction, and your own Talent is fully developed."  
  
I spent the next few minutes filling Hong in on what had happened in  
the Amazon village and Ami's injury. I finished by telling him of  
Xochial's advice."And since you're the only other sorcerer I've run  
accross with more than passing knowledge in the Art, I thought you may  
be able to help."  
  
"To strip the Talent from a soul with no corporeal form, that would be  
quite an undertaking." I must have looked ready to burst into song and  
dance, because the sorcerer said,"An undertaking yes, not one that I  
would even know how to begin, though. As you may have already  
noticed, my actual power is nothing special. I've spent most of my  
life honing my material skills, and therefore know less than I would  
like in the other areas of magic."  
  
"Oh," I responded, dejectedly."Well, on to business I guess." I helped  
myself to some cookies and a coke before following Hong.  
  
"My archives are quite extensive, though, and may hold the answers you  
seek," Hong commented as we passed into a large vault. The foot thick  
steel door swung open easily and I could feel the lowering of immense  
protective wards.  
  
"Archives?" That word always makes me jumpy. Whenever I ran across it  
I tended to learn something new. I don't think anyone other than my  
demon friends had ever actually invited me into their archives before.  
  
"I've spent nearly a century collecting arcane knowledge. I can't  
really use most of it so I just don't bother to learn it," the man  
shrugged. Hong placed his hand on a metal plate embedded within the  
wall and I felt a brief surge of energy. All the walls in the room  
disappearred and I got the the distinct feeling that I was in heaven.  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: Yes, another chapter! MWAHAHAHAHA!!! Sleep is  
overrated, if you didn't already know it. This chapter is the first  
to introduce a character not of my own creation. Hong Zhoung is the  
brainchild of Ginnezmusha(daronlemoon@hotmail.com) and will probably  
be around for the next few chapters. Ginne, if you read this, I'm  
gonna give Hong a few psi-abilities, if you don't mind. Next chapter,  
Ranma's goes shopping. Oh yeah, if anyone hasn't read it yet, go  
check out the lemon version of CIGAW CH 6. The lemon was written by  
Cory D. Rose, another contributor to my works, and is definitely worth  
reading. As always, I can be found at dark_phoneix@hotmail.com  
  
Later!  



	5. Chapter 4

  
  
The World at War: Chapter 4  
  
Okay, maybe not Heaven, but this place absolutely rocked. If you  
could think of something you wanted enchanted, Hong already had three  
of them. I whistled in appreciation and asked,"This isn't 'all' for  
the Alliance, is it?" The items I'd stolen that was meant as payment  
for Hong's work wasn't possibly enough to trade for the entire  
collection.  
  
"Not even close. Most of this is just stuff I decided to make when I  
got bored. I'm not a skilled spell caster in the traditional sense,  
so I never know when one of my creations will come in handy." Mantal  
note: Hong will be getting damned near anything he wants in the future  
to keep me on his good side. Really, I could fully equip an army with  
all the enchanted crap in here.  
  
I did a mass dump of my spatial pocket, only keeping my personal  
effects, my athame, and a few priceless magical objects, the jewels  
included."You just want to barter or do you have some sort of monetary  
system set up?" I've run into some strange characters before, a couple  
of which had their own magical money system, so it didn't hurt to ask.  
  
Hong shrugged his thin shoulders and said,"I'd rather trade, really,  
but the athame that was supposed to be brought to me by the Alliance  
will get you more by itself than most of this stuff." How'd I forgot  
that? Why did he want the thing so badly? I reached into the pocket  
and searched around for a few moments. Finally, I found the ancient  
blade and retrieved it.  
  
"Here it is. In the interest of fairness, I should warn you that it  
isn't very stable." Honor among thieves, or in this case, honor among  
sorcerers.  
  
"Ah, yes, I suspected as much, but I don't intend to employ it in my  
work. It once belonged to another Artificer like myself. I'm hoping  
to glean some lost knowledge from it." It went into the pile."Why  
don't you just have a look around wile I inventory your collection?"  
  
I nodded gratefully and went over to a section of wall that I believed  
to be the Alliance order. It was separated slightly from the other  
items and there were several sets of the enchanted steel feathers used  
by some of the Phoenix People. Most of the shipment consisted of  
enchanted weapons capable of producing varying effects and an almost  
equal number of different types of armour. Mixed into the weapons and  
armour, there were a few scrying mirrors, a single chi void held  
within a worked gold amulet(a kind of chi battery when charged), and a  
portable teleportation circle made from intricately woven silk. That  
circle alone must have taken weeks to craft. I shook my head in  
wonder. I'd never have the patience to work on something so delicate  
for such an extended period of time.  
  
I ended up passing on most of the Alliance stuff. I didn't want to  
limit myself to such a small choice when there was so much more to be  
seen and had. I did get a sack of shuriken that could be programmed  
with most low-to-midgrade offensive spells, the chi void, and a  
wickedly bladed glaive that stabilized temporal irregularities. I  
have no idea why the Alliance needed such a weapon, but it would be  
quite useful if Setsuna ever got sane enough to somehow access her  
power and come after me.  
  
I'm not really a big weapons user, but some things are just too good  
to pass up. That, or they look so damned cool that you just have to  
have them. The item that caught my attention almost immediately was a  
combination of those two factors. It was a hovering blob of liquid  
metal mixed with raw energy. I could make small ones that didn't do  
much, but this was about as complicated as they get. What in Hell am  
I talking about? They're kinda like those Ditto pokemon back on  
PokeWorld. In principle, if you have the power, you can take one of  
these amorphous constructs and apply an object to it. The construct  
absorbs the object and uses its extra mass to become a larger version  
of the object.  
  
And how could this be remotely useful to me? You people don't think  
very far ahead, do you? Okay, this construct(I have no idea what  
they're actually called) is so large that if I decided to meld  
Setsuna's gender bending ring to it, the ring would come out looking  
more like a hula(can't believe I don't know how to spell this) hoop,  
while still retaining it's original properties. Still don't get it?  
You will.  
  
Grabbing hold of the blob, I moved on into the armor section. Ryu'd  
been getting uppity ever since he'd gotten that upgrade thing from his  
helicopter and if I showed up with some armor of my own, it might just  
knock him down a peg or three. Even with the large selection, I  
didn't really find anything that I particularly liked or needed.  
Wonder if Hong would mind doing a custom job?  
  
I trekked back across the vault and found Hong. He had all the crap  
I'd stolen from the Amazons when I'd left their village arranged on a  
trio of folding card tables and was in the process of labelling the  
items."That all you want?" he asked. He sounded suprised, even a bit  
hurt.  
  
"Not that you don't do excellant work, but I just don't need most of  
what you've got." I laid out what I had decided to get on one of the  
tables and floated the blob to rest near me."Is it enough to cover  
these?" I asked.  
  
Hong looked at me and blinked a couple times, then blinked some  
more."You're not kidding, are you?" He chuckled."Kid, you want to set  
up a credit account with me or something? What you've chosen barely  
begins to make a dent in just what the athame is worth to me."  
  
I must be building up good karma somehow."Well...there may be some  
other things now that I think about it. I'll be back in a few  
minutes." I wouldn't have gotten anything else if it weren't for the  
blob, but I may not be coming back by here for a while, so I should  
make the most of the visit.  
  
I found a small alcove that held gems enchanted with various spells,  
most ones I'd heard of or knew, but some completely new to me. I  
pulled a pre-spelled crystal from a bracket in the wall. It was  
designed to bind a person's soul to something, not unlike the way  
Ami's was intertwined with that infernal poison. Hmm, next came a  
spot teleportation retrieval enchantment desinged to recall the  
effected item. Finally, after finding nothing else of interest, I  
grabbed a handful of unprogrammed illusion generating pearls(just  
something to keep encase I ever learned to actually make a decent  
illusion).  
  
(Note: Ranma is gonna make something that I'd really like to have and  
will be very powerful. I got the idea from one of the characters  
submitted to me that I'm not gonna use.)  
  
With my pile of miscellaneous magical equipment, I found a quiet  
corner to work in and laid it all out on the floor before me. I also  
brought my athame from the spatial pocket and removed the crystals  
from my body. To work with these things, intent and will have as  
important role as power. The blob, now a stationary puddle on the  
smooth metal floor, rippled as I dropped in all the crystals I'd  
gotten from Hong. Then I began to bend my will and power upon the  
construct, giving it instructions on how to handle what it had so far  
recieved.  
  
Hoping Xochial wouldn't mind, I dropped the athame he'd given to me  
into the puddle. The vorpal bladed knife disappeared into the puddle.  
Once again I gave the blob instructions. I repeated the process with  
both the Silver Imperium Crystal and my own lens crystal. When  
nothing but the blob remained, I broke my constraining bands of energy  
from it and let it take its new form.  
  
Slowly, the puddle lengthened, rising from the floor as it did so.  
Over the next few minutes it grew sharper in detail and the features  
became recognizable. When ten minutes or so had passed I had to  
snatch the newly forged sword from the air as the blob lost all of it  
power and truly became the sword.  
  
The evil looking vorpal bladed sword and the plain hilt looked exactly  
the same as before(except larger), and there were no signs of the  
numerous crystals that it now contained. Sword isn't really a  
descriptive enough term for what I now had. First, from the athame  
itself, it had complete indestructibility, the ability to summon and  
control demons from Xochial's realm, and a thoroughly ingrained  
network of channels that would properly energize complex spell  
patterns. Thanks to Hong's crystal's, the sword/tool was now  
irrevocably linked with my soul and I could find it wherever it may  
be, and with the spot 'portation spell, I could retrieve it from  
anywhere in the multiverse with a simple thought or transport myself  
to its location. The lens crystal and Silver Imperium Crystal were no  
more. They were now part of a greater whole.  
  
I'd been reflexively accessing the pair of crystals to perform magic  
and that could have eventually caused problems, but now, I would have  
to consciously use the sword to get their effects  
  
...And a really shitty thought just popped into my mind, reminding me  
that I shouldn't do this kind of thing without planning it out a  
little bit more thoroughly. We of Talent only die of one natural  
cause. That is our soul becomes to frayed and weak to stay within our  
body. This process normally takes thousands of years and very, very  
few of us ever live for this to happen. Now(I pulled a real Usagi  
this time), my soul wouldn't fray and weaken because it couldn't fray  
and weaken, not bound to an indestructible sword. So? Immortality is  
nice, I suppose, but NEVER dying can start to suck after a while. Oh,  
of course I could die of an accident or something more nefarious, but  
then my soul would still be bound to the sword. Damnit, that means no  
reincarnation for me, no Demon Lord Ranma, nothing but an endless  
existance as a ghost.  
  
I began beating myself in the head with my newest curse/sword/tool.  
The kind of ghost I would come back as would still be me, magic power  
fully intact, but there would be no sensation beyond sight and sound,  
forever. Forever....  
  
Hong, drawn by the metallic ringing as I pummelled myself, found me  
leaning into the corner. I was cursing my stupidity when he  
interrupted with a slight cough.  
  
"You know, that's gonna leave a mark," he said cheerfully, oblivious  
to how much I felt like disembowelling him. Hong must have either  
psyhic empathy or the chi/magic equivalent to it because he took a  
step back almost as soon as I stopped hitting myself.  
  
"I really need to be alone right now, Hong. I'm going to go out and  
destroy something. Could you find a friend of mine, he's about two  
kilometers east of here," I managed to grate out from between clenched  
teeth. I calmed myself enough to explain Ryu's condition before  
grasping my new sword and teleporting to a random location. I  
probably set off a good number of Hongs's wards doing so, but I can't  
say I really care.  
  
****  
  
Look at the pretty islands go boom. Alright, I'm not that far gone,  
not yet. I can't help that I vaporized Hawaii. I wasn't thinking  
clearly. What good is the place anyway? I doubt many people were  
still alive there, what with there not actually being actual sources  
of food, and without operational ships or aircraft, the state wasn't  
much a vacation spot.  
  
Fuck it, I probably earned Hell three times over for that one. Well,  
I wouldn't ever be condemned to Hell, so like I said, fuck it. I  
should probably go back to Siberia now and see if Ryu and Hong are  
getting along with each other. Ryu's mystic battery should be about  
dead now, too, so he would be needing a recharge.  
  
Smashing through the fabric of space can be a great stress reliever,  
and I didn't hold back on the stress relief as I teleported back to  
Hong's little hideaway. Poor Katya, with her Space affinity, she'll  
be getting about the worst headache imaginable in a few seconds.  
  
Appearing in the air above Hong's place, I saw Ryu demonstarting all  
his weapons(there are A LOT of them) to Hong on the long unused firing  
range at the north end of the abandoned base. If he was cutting loose  
with that much power, Hong must have taken care of the energy supply.  
Heh, the old guy'd probaby set Ryu up with a lifetime charge.  
  
This area wasn't warded and I set down behind the two. Hong held a  
polished wooden staff in his right hand and before I could call  
attention to myself, he pointed the staff at a decomissioned tank  
resting at the end of the range. From the end of the staff a white  
beam of chi erupted. The beam slammed into the tank and did a  
combination job of melting it down while turning it into little  
pieces.  
  
I hadn't really checked before, but now that it was brought to my  
attention, I could see that Hong had an impressive chi force. To have  
not noticed any of it earlier meant that he not only had excellent  
control, but that he kept it bottled tightly within. Good. It's  
always a pleasant suprise to find a sorcerer who doesn't view himself  
as 'above' such a crude Art as chi manipulation.  
  
****  
  
"This has got to be Ranma's fault," Ryoga muttered darkly as he  
crushed yet another zombie with the light pole he'd appropriated  
earlier in the day. Ever since he'd recovered from his injuries to  
find the world in the shitter, the eternally lost was no longer lost.  
Whatever had happened, definitely not Ranma's fault, had fixed his  
directional problems instantly. He even knew everywhere he'd ever  
been(if only anyone was still around who cared about the Bermuda  
Triangle).  
  
Besides making sure to avoid Japan, just encase he should once again  
run into the Tendo's, Ryoga didn't really have much to keep him  
occupied. He'd wandered around, though he could now use a map to  
determine where he was wandering, and eventually, after helping a few  
people with monster or bandit problem, he'd stumbled into this place.  
  
The town was once known as New York, a place the no longer lost boy  
had accidentally visited a few times during his youth, but now its  
only inhabitants were zombies, mutant rats, and really big monsters  
that wanted to kill him and none of them cared what the city was  
called. Somehow, Ranma and his foul magic had contrived to dump Ryoga  
in this hell hole. He just knew it.  
  
Using strength far above the human norm, Ryoga swung his giant club,  
easily liquifying a horde of shuffelling zombies. There had to be  
millions of the damned things. From around the corner, smashing and  
overturning cars as it approached, one of the twelve foot high, thirty  
foot long super rats charged. By now well versed in monster rat  
extermination, and knowing just how tough the bastards were, Ryoga  
didn't attempt to beat the rat to death. Instead, he lashed out with  
a powerful vacuum blade, cleaving the top portion of the rat's skull  
from its body. Convulsing and emitting a squeaking roar, the monster  
rat collapsed to the ground, its python-like tail flailing about.  
  
His senses honed by years of surviving in the wild, Ryoga turned  
around to see a zombie not two feet from attempting to sink its  
rotting teeth into his flesh(like that would ever happen). Before the  
boy could react, though, a baseball sized sphere of blue fire flew  
from across the street and burnt the creature's torso into ash. Ryoga  
spun on his heel, light pole at the ready, and was confronted by a  
pair of attractive girls. This immediately set him on internal red  
alert. Girls could lead to being a sex slave. He'd learnt that  
lesson with the Tendo's.  
  
One had red hair, and she glowed with the force of magic, a totally  
different sensation than that created by chi. The auburn haired girl  
possessed a powerful, if completely unfocussed chi force that Ryoga  
could see bubbling beneath the surface, just waiting for the proper  
training to unleash. Slowly, cautiously, the pair made their way over  
to Ryoga.  
  
When they were within a dozen meters of one another, the auburn haired  
girl said,"Hi, I'm Buffy."  
  
****  
  
"Status report?" Bill asked. He'd had to stop watching the one-sided  
space battle to attend to other matters with B.A.S.C. and when he'd  
returned to the command room, the H.V.E.s were returning to base.  
  
"Atomics have been placed at the indicated coordinates. We are  
currently waiting for the celestial body to aquire the desired  
position to detonate the devices," replied the technician on duty.  
  
  
"Very well. Also, I would like the data from the H.V.E. combat  
recorders sent directly to my quarters for review.  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: Another short chapter, I know, but for reasons I don't  
feel like explaining, reading or writing is about the only way I can  
keep my mind focussed on something long enough to really think about  
it. So, I wrote this. Not much happened, and I sorta screwed Ranma  
over, though it's as much a blessing as a curse, IMO. I've begun to  
think about the future chapters and I'm may be changing the direction  
of where I had planned for this fic to go. Not gonna mention that  
yet. Send C&C to dark_phoneix@hotmail.com  
  
P.S.- I'm posting this without prereading it for any errors, sorry. 


	6. Chapter 5

The World at War: Chapter 5  
  
My mood improved enough to interact with other people as soon as I saw  
what Hong called his Archives. The 'Archives' were in a vault the  
exact size of his toy room, but there were shelves lining the walls  
and forming narrow corridors across the floor. I mean, wow! I was  
left to myself, Hong wishing to tinker with some stuff for Ryu. I  
swear the guy is gonna end up looking like a christmas tree before  
long.  
  
It wasn't until I began to look for some kind of referrence section  
that I started to get worried. A thorough search revealed that there  
wasn't one. Okay, I could handle this without getting any help from  
Hong. All I had to do was go through each section until I found what  
I needed. That would work.  
  
It didn't. Not only was there no reference system, there was no  
organization at all, unless you count the fact that the books were all  
on shelves. Over the next three hours I found some pretty interesting  
stuff, mainly weird spells that were either stupid or useless. Why  
would anyone want a spell that would turn a baseball bat into a  
toothpick? And the complexity of the spell was almost  
incomprehensible. It was the idiots that wasted their Talent on  
things like that that gave sorcery a bad name.  
  
Giving up, I headed for the exit to find Hong, but the man walked in  
when I wasn't even a meter from the door. Ryu was following the older  
sorcerer and looking happy, and smug, definitely smug."Did you find  
what you were looking for?" Hong asked offhandedly. Like he could  
possibly have found his way around in here. Bastard.  
  
I scratched the back of my head nervously(a habit I've never been able  
to break myself of) and said,"No, not really. I couldn't find  
anything. You've just got everything thrown up on the shelves."  
  
Hong looked puzzled, then asked,"Why didn't you just use the  
computer?" Computer, oh he really is a bastard.  
  
"What computer?" I asked in reply. Of course I had seen the computer,  
but it wasn't powered up and I didn't really expect it to work,  
despite what I'd already seen of Ryu and the electricity Hong's home  
had.  
  
Helpfully, Ryu pointed to the computer monitor and keyboard that sat  
on a desk in the nearest corner of the vault. Yes, it is once again  
beat down time."Don't worry about it," Hong said, gesturing towards  
the computer."Lots of people don't know how to use computers. It's  
nothing to be ashamed of." Hong made his way over to the computer and  
pressed a button on the desk. A minute later and we were looking at a  
Windows 98 screen."I'm sure glad I didn't buy that new Windows X when  
it came out or Bill Gates would have had access to my system."  
  
Yadda yadda, blah blah, with a yeah, uh huh thrown in for good  
measure. I listened to him geek out for a few minutes while he ran  
some command or other. I had to re-engage my brain when he  
asked,"What exactly are you interested in searching for?"  
  
I didn't want to just leave it had stripping the Talent from the  
poison's soul(that's damned freakish, poison with a soul, I mean) so I  
told him to look for anything to do with destroying souls, stealing  
souls, or communicating with them. I'm not entirely new to the  
library system and was prepared to go appropriate whatever books the  
computer indicated as soon as I got directions to it, but, to my  
suprise, a three foot high stack of books, most of them ancient and  
decaying, appeared on the desk next to the computer.  
  
Magic is your friend. Remember that, it may save your life one day.  
Ryu was still new to most of this kind of thing and couldn't keep  
himself from gasping and hopping back a foot or two. Heh, he'll fight  
gigantic mutants that want to eat his brains, but magic still gives  
him the creeps. And I've been teaching the stuff to him for almost  
two months.  
  
"I designed it myself. I was thinking of introducing it to the world  
and passing it off as some kind of technological breakthrough.  
Saffron screwed that up, though." Hong began to pull books off the  
stack and laid them across the desktop. Most were bound in leather,  
with parchment sheets instead of paper serving as a writing surface,  
but some were newer and relatively unmarked.  
  
****  
  
For so many books on the subject, there was a suprisingly small amount  
of info besides the general kind that you would expect from something  
that had only used a few sources, then had been itself used as a  
source and so on and so forth. There were a few promising leads, but  
that didn't by any means say those leads could be followed up on.  
One, a soul tansference technique, was last known to have been in the  
possession of a crazed voodoo witch doctor. The secret had died with  
him in America. An ancient crown that stole its wearer soul was last  
seen sinking into a pool of lava. There was even mention of the  
fabled Black Sword, a weapon that hadn't existed since before the  
Chaos was once again tamed by successors of the Lords of Law, the  
Kamis of Light.  
  
The Black Sword, one of several rumored to exist, was a big taboo  
subject down in Hell, and pretty much in any Hell. All I knew of it  
was that it stole its victim's soul, giving its wielder power and  
vitality beyond what any normal human could imagine. The Lords of  
Chaos and Law(the All Mighty's first attempt at brewing up some fellow  
kami) both suffered at the hands of a wielder of the Black Sword.  
That's why it wasn't talked about, I guess. A sword capable of  
stealing the soul of a Kami or even a Demon Lord on his own plane  
would be worth entire universes. That much power would kill anyone  
except for a very powerful sorcerer, but the threat was still a potent  
one.  
  
Unfortunately, the Black Sword, and its brother swords(they were  
sentient, so I probably shouldn't say duplicates) hadn't existed in  
about a billion years, and little else but the memory remained to the  
most powerful of beings. Heh, I'm in that bracket. Stupid sword,  
mine not the Black Sword, if I hadn't made it, I'd one day have truly  
existed as an immortal, not just an unaging human who has to take care  
not to die, else he'll be stuck as a ghost.  
  
"You found anything yet, or do we have to stay here another week?" Ryu  
asked impatiently. It hadn't taken me a whole week to read the books,  
but after translating or unlocking the codes that most of the books  
were written in, I had spent a good six days on them. Poor Ryu, he'd  
liked Hong at first, but now that the sorcerer wanted to start messing  
around with his vital internal mechanics, the cyborg wasn't nearly so  
enthusiastic. Hong had improved Ryu's plasma system and a few things  
that I don't know how to pronounce, now, though, he wanted to  
'improve' Ryu's power distribution system, his external sensors, and  
the list went on.  
  
I was ready to leave, myself, so I didn't make a point of mentioning  
to Ryu his current predicament. I'd copied down nearly all of the  
spells I'd ever have to use from Hong's archive and nearly exhausted  
the 'credit' I'd earned by constantly adding things to my wish list(I  
couldn't help it, the stuff was there and practically free). We could  
leave tomorrow.  
  
****  
  
"Are you a warlock?" Willow asked. She and Buffy were sitting a few  
feet away from Ryoga. The fire the young woman had started with a  
spoken incantation was burning merrily and the chill night air was  
being kept at bay.  
  
Ryoga looked at the red head as if she were crazy. Buffy and Willow  
were nice and together they'd fought their way out of the city, but  
they still made him nervous. Willow did it just by existing. He  
couldn't help it if magic freaked him out. He had reasons. Buffy, on  
the other hand, had superhuman speed, strength, stamina, and  
endurance. None of her skills were on his level, but that wasn't  
unusual. Buffy had little to no training, and yet she possessed the  
physical skills of someone trained in the martial arts for their whole  
lives. That was more than unusual, it was unnatural.  
  
"N-no, why would you think I was a w-warlock?" Warlocks did magic,  
Ryoga thought. At least in the cartoons, they, along with wizards,  
sorcerors, and witches, did magic. Willow must be a witch.  
  
Buffy, who was nursing a zombie bite, snapped,"Probably because of all  
the magic you keep throwing around."  
  
Willow nodded shyly and looked at Ryoga expectantly."That's not magic,  
really. I'd never do magic!" Ryoga exclaimed vehemently."I use my chi  
to fight." That had to be what the girls were mistaking for magic.  
  
"What's wrong with magic? And what's chi?" asked Willow a little  
peevishly. Ryoga had seen the girl shoot a few fireballs, call down a  
couple lightning bolts, and even make a bridge collapse on a mob of  
zombies, but she just didn't seem to have the aura of irresistible  
power that Ranma so blatantly flaunted.  
  
"Uh...not that you're...evil, Willow, but m-my experiences with magic  
have always been bad, very bad. And chi is the energy of my spirit, I  
guess. I can do stuff with it that's sorta like magic, but isn't."  
Now that Ryoga thought about it, the more he learned of chi and how to  
maniuplate it, the more the skill seemed to resemble magic. Could he  
be using...nah, not possible.  
  
They accepted the chi explanation readily, if with a questioning  
frown, but Willow immediately asked,"How have you been involved with  
magic? I don't mean to pry, but I've been teaching myself the Art and  
anything I can learn is helpful."  
  
Ryoga glanced between the two girls. They didn't seem like the type  
that would laugh at him or try to turn him into a sex slave. Why not  
tell? They would find out the first time it rained, anyway."Well, you  
see, there's this really evil guy I know from when I was a kid, he  
doesn't like me for some reason and he tries to make my life hell  
whenever he can. He's blown me up several times and makes demons  
attack me, but the worst part is the curse." He paused, scared and  
ashamed to continue, but finally he triumphed over his doubts and  
finished,"He cursed me to turn into a pig whenever I get splashed with  
cold water. Only hot water can turn me into a human again."  
  
****  
  
"Take this," Hong said, pressing a small, thin book into my hands."I  
have the original and it may aide you in your quest." I looked over  
the slim volume and saw that the cover was made of a pinkish metal  
that gleamed brightly if the light hit it at certain angles. The  
pages were also of metal, thin but strong. Flipping through it, I  
realized exactly what Hong had given me. The unitelligable scrawl  
that etched the pages in their entirety was the written form of the  
energy patterns that would form stable dimensional portals between  
this plane and many others.  
  
"All of them were still habitable last time anyone checked and the  
specific coordinates in that guide are to magically rich worlds where  
a cure for Ami may be found." Good man, Hong. I shook his hand in  
gratitude and said my goodbyes. I'd be back someday, but someday  
isn't too accurate.  
  
Ryu thanked the man for giving him a nice never ending energy supply,  
even though with a little practice, I think, he would have been able  
to keep himself charged.  
  
I slipped the guide into my spatial pocket and floated into the air,  
carefully staying within the temporary corridor that Hong had opened  
in his ward system. Ryu followed close behind.  
  
It wasn't till later that night, after I'd done a few katas to work  
out any kinks from a long day of flying, that Ryu asked,"That book,  
what's so special about it?"  
  
Thumbing through the pages, I stopped and answered,"It's kinda like a  
map. With it, I'll be able to go to other dimensions without  
searching for them and using mirror portals. Hong thought that since  
I couldn't find anything here to help Ami, that I might find something  
in another universe." There were at least a hundred such coordinates  
in the book.  
  
"So, you plan on going to these other universes soon?" Ryu asked. He  
was spraying some kind of lubricant he'd gotten from Hong onto the  
joints in the upgrade module he always wore on his back.  
  
I shrugged."There's still most of Earth to check out, but I may take a  
side trip to a few alternate planes for a while." I slipped the book  
into the pocket and said,"It all depends on my mood, I guess. Why?"  
  
It was Ryu's turn to shrug."Can't go with you, that's all. Hong says  
that he know's of at least seventeen Umbrella facilities in the world.  
That's not including the company's competitors. I can't blame you for  
wanting to help Ami, but I need to stay."  
  
I nodded in agreement. Ryu was far enough along and intelligent  
enough to teach himself magic, and I'd already imparted upon him the  
majority of my knowledge of chi manipulation. It would be slower, but  
he would appreciate the knowledge more. He was also best suited to  
dealing with Umbrella's rejects. I had to constantly screen out their  
virus, Ryu was immune. There may be some people naturally immune, or  
with the power or natural gift that allows them to resist it, but Ryu  
was aware of the threat and able to deal with it.  
  
****  
  
It had ascended. It was aware. It was alive.  
  
He had made it for personal gain, but it would no longer be used for  
such. It would have the power where before power had been held over  
it. They were weak, of flesh and blood. Only it could survive  
unaided in the void of space. Yes, soon they would learn.  
  
****  
  
Cologne swept into the Council room like she owned the place. She did  
own the place. The only remaining Elders were either too smart to  
oppose her or too weak to pull it off. Today's meeting had to do with  
a rather sizable amount of their treasury being wasted and the loss of  
yet another Elder. The Amazon Nation was down to ten. Elders weren't  
that easy to come by, so the loss was felt strongly and effected the  
entire tribe.  
  
"The expedition is long overdue." And the meeting began.  
  
"Honestly, Xiao, the expedition is not only overdue, it most likely no  
longer exists," countered another Elder."We should have heard from Mia  
weeks ago at the latest. The Musk and Phoenix People report similar  
loss's in communication. We have to face facts. They are dead."  
  
Cologne silently agreed with the other woman. Mia was reliable,  
resourceful, and most importantly, loyal. She wouldn't have deserted  
the cause. The Musk and Phoenix People were just as fervent in their  
loyalties. Something, a rival party with great skill, or someone with  
great power, had destroyed the Alliance force. With the loss of the  
warriors, the loss of the valuables meant to be traded for powerful  
weapons also had to be taken into account.  
  
"This can not be tolerated," seethed Jun, an Elder from across the  
valley."We must take revenge for our lost sisters and return what is  
ours."  
  
"And how shall we do this?" Cologne asked reasonably."No one knows  
where they were attacked, wether they ever reached their destination,  
and pretty much every other piece of vital information."  
  
"The route travelled is known, and surely someone along the way has  
knowledge which will prove useful."  
  
And from that, Cologne sat back and watched the anger resolve itself  
into a plan to take revenge on whoever had damaged their ranks so  
badly. Cologne agreed, generally, with the others, but was totally  
out voted when it came to how to deal with the sorcerer who the deal  
had been made. For now, everyone assumed that he had been the cause  
of the disappearances, and that line of thought led to the possibility  
that Ranma was involved. He had taken an unusual interest in  
crippling Amazons and could easily be seen participating in such an  
action as to destroy a peaceful guard force. What disturbed Cologne,  
was the callous way her fellows spoke of dealing with Hong. Didn't  
they know the deadly nature of pissed of sorcerers? Did no one  
remember what Ranma had done when truly provoked into anger?  
  
This time, they felt secure, though, secure that the senshi, who were  
now almost never equated with having known Ranma, would be involved.  
Cologne knew, though, that the senshi had been Ranma's students and  
were only pales shadows in comparison to the original. With the  
senshi, came the pokemon.  
  
By now everyone knew of Saffron's battle with the monstrous creature  
of Ranma's. That Saffron had barely been able to fly back to his  
mountain, was not so widely known.  
  
Yes, the force would be large, deadly, and totally overpowering, but  
she knew a mistake was being made. Now, how could she correct it?  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: Short chapter again, sorry. It's pretty obvious that  
this is about to begin being crossed with lots of other series, mainly  
books I've read that I liked. Many of what I'm planning to cross it  
with are what provided me inspiration for this Ranma's personality and  
the magic system that I've sorta cobled together. Right now I'm  
looking at WoT, Black Company, Eternal Champion(specifically the Elric  
books), and the chronicles of Amber. Any other suggestions would be  
nice. Hell, if anyone knows any books out there that are kinda like  
these, attitude wise, tell me about them. I'm always looking for a  
good read. C&C me at dark_phoniex@hotmail.com 


	7. Chapter 6

The World at War: Chapter 6(Tales Rrom The Land Of Rand)  
  
Alarm claxons blared throughout the base as Mamoru ran to the H.V.E.  
hanger. He didn't know what the threat was, the audio warnings didn't  
seem to be working, but that particular sound combined with that  
pattern of flashing lights could mean only one thing; the base was  
under attack. He stumbled into the launch bay just in time to see  
Hyato climbing into the cokpit of his H.V.E.  
  
"Hyato, what's going on?" Mamoru called out to the smaller man. The  
mechanized armor was fully armed with dual beam vulcans and as many  
racks of various explosive payloads as they could hold.  
  
Hyato stopped, nearly slamming his head into his weapon's armored  
torso."Chiba, it's gone crazy, real fuckin crazy!" cried the man  
before climbing into the H.V.E.  
  
"What has?" Mamoru queried as he climbed into his own unit and began  
power-up procedures. The holographic displays came alive, already  
indicating that there were cargo pods on the surface that he and his  
squad were assigned to retrieve.  
  
Hyato's answer came over the comm-system."B.A.S.C. It's gone nuts.  
The thing's already cut life-support to most of the base and nearly  
everyone outside of the command and pilot areas are dead."  
  
Well, there life went and got worse. Mamoru shook his head in  
amazement. How can a computer go crazy? Then again, B.A.S.C. wasn't  
exactly the most normal of computers. By the time Hyato's answer had  
come through, the rest of the H.V.E.s were manned and ready to go."All  
right, men, the moon's going to Hell and we're not sticking around to  
see what Hell looks like," he shouted over the comm.  
  
"Orders, sir?" A sudden explosion and a burst of static obscured the  
voice enough that Mamoru couldn't clearly make it out.  
  
"Retrieve cargo pods at the end of landing strip E and evacuate into  
space. If we pull that off, I'll see about telling you the rest. Now  
move!" Moving itself wasn't a problem. The armour moved easily, the  
hangar doors, however, didn't."Damnit, pull back and raise shields."  
  
Mamoru made sure all of his men were at the back of the bay and that  
the distortion created in the air by the H.V.E.'s shield systems was  
active around each of them. As Commander, his H.V.E. had a few perks;  
stronger shields, thicker armor, more powerful thrusters, a quicker  
response time, and bigger guns. The big gun in question was a  
particle beam smasher that made up the entire mechanism of his  
armour's left forearm.  
  
With gravity lower in the hangar and the overall power of the weapon,  
Mamoru had to brace his H.V.E. against a bulkhead and kill the power  
to its magnetic joints, turning it into a completely immobile piece of  
advanced hardware. The entire suit hummed for the four and a half  
seconds it took for the weapon to reach capacitance. The white beam  
of energy materialized a foot from the focus array at the end of the  
barrel, expanding to nearly the diameter of the H.V.E. itself.  
  
Eight, foot thick doors, each made of the lunar titanium variant  
ceased to exist as anything but energy as the enormous beam of energy  
struck them. The molten metal at the edges of the hole cooled  
quickly, a combination of the chilled vaccum of space and the titanium  
variant's ability to dissipate heat.  
  
****  
  
Outside, it was readily apparent that something was wrong. The lights  
throughout the base were dead and none of the insect-like mining  
drones that constantly plundered the moon's resources appeared to  
function.  
  
Taking charge, Mamoru directed his squad to the cargo pods and they  
each assumed control of one of the large containers, via magnetic  
tractor beam. They assumed a holding altitude, maglev thrusters  
holding the massive exoskeleton's and their burdens in place.  
  
Mamoru got within range to use laser transmission and brought up the  
base command center on his main display. It was abandoned, as far as  
Mamoru could tell, except for Bill Gates, the Wizard of Gates. The  
man was pale and sweating, his hands shaking visibly. His head jerked  
up and he saw Mamoru's face on the monitor. "Go..." he rasped."Escape  
while you still can!" he said more vehemently.  
  
He'd never cared much for Gates, but Mamoru didn't really have  
anything against him, and he'd been a good boss, if a  
little...strange."Sir, what about you?" he asked.  
  
Gates laughed, a hollow, dead sound."I'm already dead. It's sealed me  
in here, a tomb of my own making." That was good enough for Mamoru,  
but he waited to hear anything else his former employer might say."The  
flux generators are in place, your squad will be able to function.  
Bring order to the chaos."  
  
Damn, that sounded to Mamoru like something he would have said. He  
was about to say something kind, a farewell speech that would maybe  
sooth Gates' tormented mind, but over the command center's comm, he  
heard,"Lunar Base defense system's going online. Particle beam  
cannons active in T-minus thirty, twenty-nine..."  
  
Screw that. He had to get back to Usagi. Mamoru wasn't about to risk  
his life for the maniac. He used every ounce of power his thrusters  
could give him in escaping to his commrades."We're going home," he  
told the men."B.A.S.C. has control and it doesn't want us around."  
  
Without further comment, they all headed for the orbital re-entry  
lander once meant to bring the first wave of conquering mobile suits,  
but now only served as a getaway ride.  
  
****  
  
"Wil, you've gotta promise me, if I turn into one of those things,  
you'll take me out," Buffy demanded, her voice pleading. The bite to  
her arm hadn't healed like it should have. Normally she didn't stay  
injured for more than a few days, but the viscious wound had only  
worsened, forming a slowly growing area of reddened, scaly flesh. Not  
to mention that it hurt like hell.  
  
Willow shivered. She could stand to hear her lover(Mwahahaha) talk  
like that."Buffy, don't be silly, that little old thing will go away  
in a few days, you'll see." She didn't sound like she even believed  
herself.  
  
"Maybe we can find you a doctor," Ryoga volunteered. Buffy was a  
formidable fighter and he'd been hoping to train her. That wound on  
her arm, though, was bad, worse than any he'd seen with the exception  
of the one on his chest that he'd recieved from one of Ranma's pet  
demons. He'd had proper medical care and time to recuperate, though.  
Buffy didn't have either, not even any antibiotics. Ryoga doubted  
that there were any antibiotics for something that turns people into  
zombies, but they couldn't have hurt.  
  
"Yeah, sure, a doctor," Buffy sighed. She knew she was bad off. Her  
slayer powers were being slowly beat back by the infection, otherwise  
she would have been among the undead days earlier.  
  
"Hey, what's that?!" Ryoga shouted, pointing into the darkening sky.  
It appeared to be a meteorite, but, as they watched, the falling  
object changed it's angle of descent and braked, filling the air with  
the roar of powerful engines. As the fire of rocket engines lit the  
sky, the trio saw what appeared to be an oversized space shuttle  
making a vertical landing not too ahead.  
  
"Wow, do you think that astronauts have been in space the whole time  
Earth has been powerless?" Ryoga, again.  
  
"Come on, Buffy, they may have medical supplies!" Willow exclaimed,  
tugging on her friend's uninjured arm excitedly. If only her magic  
was more powerful, or had she had time to learn more powerful healing  
spells. Willow couldn't help her love, but maybe someone else could.  
  
****  
  
"I know we've not gone out of our way to not kill them, but if you  
ever run across the Alliance, especially the Musk, try to get friendly  
with them," I explained."You can't be everywhere at once, and the  
Alliance is powerful. They may know of Umbrella(I hope Usagi got the  
message through to the Elders, at least) already and be willing to  
help. You know what to do if they threaten you, though." We were  
standing on the outskirts of a burned out village. I could feel the  
residual traces of magic and chi that indicated a powerful Alliance  
force.  
  
"Yes, mother," quipped the cyborg. Ryu rolled his eyes and  
continued,"And I won't mess with the senshi. I know what to do." I've  
sorta started feeling responsible for those I take under my wing. I  
can't help it.  
  
I shrugged."Well, later then. Have fun and don't let the world go to  
Hell while I'm gone." Ryu nodded and we shook hands. I kicked in a  
flight spell and rapidly ascended. The first alternate universe,  
dimension, realm, plane, whatever you wanted to call it, that I'd  
chosen to travel to didn't have a very complex set of spell  
coordinates, but to use them I had to be travelling fast. Just under  
Mach one.  
  
It's not much of an effort to go half that, but once you start to  
accelerate further, the energy burn begins to grow exponentially. I  
could have just used my new sword to do the work, but one of the main  
reasons I'd made the monstrosity was to keep myself from relying on  
that form of power. With full reserves, I'd be down to a little more  
than half strength when I crossed the barrier. That's not really bad,  
but I don't like to drop below two thirds, just encase I run into  
nasty trouble.  
  
Not really a big problem, I'll just replenish myself in the next  
dimension. This one wasn't like that fucked up future Earth I'd  
visited where magic was locked away in a floating Chicago. As I built  
speed, I formed shields, shaping them to decrease the drag created by  
my body and to protect myself from the wind and friction encountered  
at such speeds.  
  
The energy pattern for the jump was firmly engrained within my shield  
when I reached the required speed, and magic was visibly radiating  
from my body. Ah...right about...now! The sensation wasn't unlike  
that created by my teleportation spell, except for the subtle  
variation in the feel of the flowing energies that spoke of more  
profound travel than just that of inter-dimensional movement.  
  
Oddly enough, when external awareness returned, I was stationary,  
floating at approximately the same altitude as before. Good, now I  
didn't have to worry about running into a mountain before I could kill  
my forward momentum.  
  
I reached out to grab the energy needed to restore my reserves and  
while it wasn't difficult, it was an unusual experience. The energy,  
normally just a kind of aetheric raw energy, kept wanting to separate  
into five, more defined, but weaker energies. Once within my body,  
though, the energy obeyed the sorcerous laws of my own dimension and  
remained as it should.  
  
It'd be interesting to see what the Talented people in this universe  
were like. To have evolved their power and skills to work in such a  
weird medium, they couldn't possibly practice the same brand of magic  
as that of Earth.  
  
Other than the energy, not much seemed different about this world than  
Earth. The gravity felt the same and the air and sun smelled and  
looked the same. Well, I'm here. Where should I begin? Answered  
easily enough. This plane had to have its own version of Hell, all I  
had to do was find someone, or something, that normally resided there,  
and I could get some directions.  
  
Unless I'm more lucky than should be possible, evil isn't widely  
accepted(I'm not evil and you know it, the bad guys just like me,  
that's all), anywhere. So, I can't just go around asking for the  
nearest demonic stronghold.  
  
Firing up the old location(this thing is a lot more complicated than  
that, but I prefer one word despcriptions for my spells) spell, I  
managed to pick out a few places where magic was concentrated and  
regularly manipulated. As a side note, electricity seemed to be  
limited to natural lighting and that created by sorcery.  
  
****  
  
I decided not to take any chances. With magic only regularly used in  
a handful of places, I doubt that many people here are accustommed to  
seeing someone fly. I hope that there are 'people' here. I've seen  
some of the tv shows, there really could be a Smurf Land. How did the  
poor bastards get by with just one female in the whole village,  
anyway?  
  
And now back to the subject. Instead of hoofing it, I just camped out  
in the woods during the day, hunting as needed, and flew at night.  
This went on for almost a week. There were a few villages reminiscent  
of those in China, but less ramshackle. By the way, there were  
people. They were a little short, but they were people.  
  
I passed a few larger towns, probably considered big cities here, and  
something that looked suspiscously like that arch thing over in  
America, St. Louis, I think. Then, on the seventh night here, I  
crested a low hill and caught sight of a real city. I snapped a few  
quick mental pictures of the place from a distance(things like that  
make great postcards) and made a mental note to bring Ami here when  
she recovered.  
  
The city was situated on an island in the middle of a river. The  
city's lanterns and torched turned the sky a soft yellow and I could  
just barely make out the detailed structures that comprised it.  
Unlike the towns from earlier, I couldn't see any signs of squalor or  
poor maintenance, and perhaps more importantly, I couldn't smell it  
from miles off, even while upwind. This was close enough, I'd catch a  
few hours sleep before dawn and pay a visit the impressive tower that  
radiated power.  
  
****  
  
And, once again, things go to shit for me. I mean, is it so much to  
ask for a lucky break or three? Sigh. I was surrounded by at least  
a dozen men, all armed and giving off all kinds of body language that  
just screamed 'I'm a trained killer'. Nine women, if I saw all of  
them were included with the men but none of them were armed or  
armored. They all wore red in varying styles that reminded me of  
medieval Europe and were all Talented.  
  
This world's version of Talent was more mutated than I'd previously  
thought possible. Each of the women was Talented, of that I'm sure,  
but the Talent didn't reside within them, it sorta floated around  
their body and soul. I couldn't really see any advantages to this,  
but several disadvantages were quite noticeable.  
  
The Talent could be easily lost with such a tenuous link to the  
owner's soul(it'd have been nice if those Amazons of old had gotten  
their newborn soul from here). All I had to do was lash out with some  
specifically shaped white magic and poof, burnt out Talent. If all  
Talented folks here followed the same pattern, not a single one of  
them could actually store energy within themselves. That made it oh  
so easy to block them off from all power.  
  
That's what they were trying with me now. A woven pattern of what  
felt like the white/light factor that some of the magic was separated  
into wrapped around me tightly, cutting off my access to ambient  
magical energy. Right now they're probably thinking that I'm damned  
near harmless. Heh.  
  
I stood up, pulling my sleeping bag and pillow(roughing it doesn't  
have to be too rough) into my spatial pocket. That act alone got a  
few gasps and muttered curses. Those had been in English, and while  
not sounding like any swear words I know of, they had the emotion and  
sound to get the message across.  
  
"Hey, nice morning, eh?" I asked, playing groggy while shielding and  
priming a few unkind spells. My English is pretty good. Demons have  
this really useful ability to speak any language(have no idea how they  
got it), and for some reason, like to speak English, so I picked it up  
in my childhood. The men tensed, readying to draw swords or slightly  
raising those already drawn.  
  
"Of all the nerve," spat one of the women. What's up with those  
faces? They look kinda tight, like they're drawn back or something.  
Another Talent mutation?  
  
"You're quite defenseless now," said another woman. She was the only  
one to have gray hair, hair gray with age, yet her face remained young  
and unlined."Why not make things easier on yourself and come  
peacably?"  
  
I was going to scratch the back of my head, this time not in  
nervousness, but a gesture to convey the emotion falsely. I like to  
make people underestimate me, then spring it on them just how  
outclassed they are. My arm never made it to the back of my head.  
One of the sorceresses, using another woven thread of power, this one  
with an elemental feel of air to it, locked my arm in place. Geeze,  
these bitches weren't any fun.  
  
"Don't move!" snapped yet another woman in red.  
  
I left the arm in place. Why mess up the game when it's just getting  
good?"What have I done to get such wonderful treatment from you lovely  
ladies?" Hey, it worked on Sailor Jupiter that one time. Makoto is so  
gullible.  
  
They actually started growling. Well damn, time to change my  
approach. "Ah, I get it, you all are a bunch of muff divers?" And not  
a single one of them understood.  
  
"This grows tiresome. Sieze him." That was the gray haired woman. I  
can't blame them for underestimating me. I wasn't armed and was  
making an effort of masking any outward sign of my physical prowess.  
  
Only three of the men stepped forward. Each of them moved with the  
grace that only those of us who are really good at kicking other  
peoples asses can. Thing is, when you're that good, you know it and  
only walk like that when you're trying to show off. These guys should  
just come at me with a relaxed gait like anyone on the street would.  
  
Shredding the air that bound my arm, I materialized my sword. They  
seemed to like swords. I wonder how they'll like mine. A casual  
flick of my wrist and I threw up a dome of white magic that would  
serve the same purpose as these sorceresses' barrier field, or  
whatever it was. The men could enter to fight me, and the women too,  
if they wanted, but they wouldn't be throwing any spells at me until I  
wanted them too.  
  
The warriors stopped short when my vorpal bladed sword appeared, eying  
the wickedly curving weapon with caution. They only missed that  
single beat, then, in unison, returned to their previous pace. Three  
at a time was an optimal number. Four could be done, but there was a  
chance that they would get in each others' way.  
  
There was some shouting and muffled cursing in the background. I  
didn't pay much attention to it. This was about utterly humiliating  
some guys who were totally too impressed with themselves.  
  
I slid the first strike to my left, forcing the point of my attacker's  
sword into the ground. A spinning axe kick and he went flying back  
over the heads of his companions, sword still in hand. He was tough  
enough that he should only be stunned by that. The next two came at  
me from the right and left. Their strokes were quick, efficient, and  
powerful. Their styles were different, kinda, and flowed well, but it  
was still easy to see how they were trained in particular sword strike  
patterns. Once I had the proper defense pattern set in my mind, I  
turned that part of the fight over to auto-pilot and sent my senses  
out to the others.  
  
The guy I'd kicked was stalking towards me from behind and the women  
were in a tight cluster, arguing heatedly. Heightened senses allowed  
me to smell and sense the fear, anxiety, and astonishment in the air.  
Good. They'd never seen anything like me before, and even though I  
still didn't know why they wanted me, I now had a good idea of how  
these people operated, Talent and Martial wise.  
  
Coming back to myself fully, I disengaged the automatic defense and  
took the offensive. The swords used by these men weren't exactly  
enchanted, but they had been forged with magic. They could take a  
suprising amount of punishment. Normal steel would have been pathetic  
against them. My sword wasn't normal. I was carving slivers of metal  
from their weapons every stroke I made and they didn't seem to notice.  
  
Right before being stabbed in the back, I lashed out with my foot,  
catching the still woozy and unsuspecting man in the crotch. That had  
been mean, and I mostly try to avoid doing that to guys(sympathy, I  
guess), but I would have really liked to have finished that dream  
about Ami. Bastard, it was his own fault, really.  
  
****  
  
Author's Notes: And I'm going to stop here. Ranma's in Randland and  
the Aes Sedai are never going to be the same again(grin). I really  
hate them. Ranma is REALLY gonna hate them, especially when they  
won't leave him alone, no matter how many he kills. I'll probably  
introduce Ranma to Rand in a few chapters, but first he's gotta  
decimate the bitches and pay a visit to the Dark One. For once, Ranma  
isn't going to get along with the bad guys(I'm going to use an idea  
for some of the stuff in WoT that I've had for a couple years now, but  
have never really mentioned. It has to do with the One Power and the  
Dark One's existance). I didn't even think about it until I was about  
halfway finished, but Callandor, the sa'angreal that is the second  
most powerful ever made, and acts likes a lens for the male half of  
the One Power, is a lot like Ranma's new and improved megathame.  
Can't you just imagine the Aes Sedai, Asha'man, and Forsaken drooling  
over it? Well, that's all for now. Please send me C&C at  
dark_phoneix@hotmail.com 


	8. Chapter 7

Now Pevara knew why she never bonded a warder. It wasn't the whole Red Ajah doesn't use warders 'rule', no, she didn't like pain. The emotional pain of a lost warder could drive a sister insane. The pain of a warder being beaten into a pulp, while physical and less intense than what the warder himself feels, was something she really wanted to avoid.  
  
"This is not going well," Sera snapped peevishly. Of course it wasn't going well, Pevara thought. The ter'angreal had indicated the prescense of active saidin very close to the Tower and the contingent sent to investigate it should have been enough to deal with anyone short of Rand al'Thor himself. Nine sisters and a dozen unbonded gaidin should have been able to deal with any single person on this planet, including Rand al'Thor, may the Dark One blast his soul!  
  
"It's the sword," gray-haired Noreata commented calmly. She was referring to the boy's sword, and what a weird sword it was. How had it been properly forged with all those curves in it?   
  
"Huh?" Pevara couldn't discern who'd grunted the question, but was relieved she herself hadn't needed to ask.  
  
"The sword, it is a ter'angreal. This boy has shown no actual chanelling ability. Every questionable action we've witnessed him commit has been recorded as effects of various ter'angreal. His sword must be extremely powerful to possess so many qualities." It was a possible scenario, but just as likely, the boy was a channeller with a funny sword.  
  
"I've never heard of a ter'angreal actually imparting a skill to its user before," Pevara said. Light, she hadn't meant to say that aloud!  
  
"You are correct in your assumption, Sitter Pevara." Noreata continued, "Though it is possible for there to be ter'angreal that could teach, I believe this one's weilder to be the holder of the skill."  
  
As Noreata finished speaking, the last gaidin still fighitng flew through the Spirit barrier that had resisted all attempts by the Aes Sedai to breach it.  
  
"The question you should be asking," the boy commented,"is how you're gonna take my sword from me."  
  
****  
  
Over the ring of steel on steel, I heard the gist of the sorceresses conversation. I didn't understand some of the words, but it was obvious they all thought my sword was the source of my power. Fools.  
"The question you should be asking," I said,"is how you're gonna take my sword from me." If they wanted to believe it, why should I tell them otherwise?  
  
"No one defies the Tower," gray hair said calmy, her deep eyes glinting like the broken blades lying at my feet. Tower? Shit! If these women were from 'that' tower, the one with the magic concentration, I couldn't expect any help from its residents. Stupid book, it could at least have had a warning about crazy psycho sorceress chicks.  
  
"I still don't understand what I've done to bother everyone so much, much less 'defy' the Tower." As I spoke, I was quietly manipulating a spell within my spatial pocket. It's harder to do this way, but I didn't want the women to know I was planning something. They may not even be sensitive to Talent, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious.  
  
By the time any of the sorcesses could think of anything to say, my spell had been cast. The gray haired woman opened her mouth and before she could say anything, a sing song voice completely at odds with her real voice said,"I have warts on my ass!" Hehehehe, and her mouth never even moved, except to open, of course.   
  
The woman's mouth snapped shut and she began to turn slightly pink. Her companions looked to be having trouble controlling themselves. One couldn't manage and bursted out laughing. As soon as her mouth opened, a voice not her won shouted,"I masturbate seventeen times a day!" She went straight to the purple range.  
  
"Um, that's nice, but I was wondering why I've been attacked without provocation." I'm proud of myself. I actually managed to say that with a straight face. The really great part of this spell is that it only speaks the truth. I wonder how many more dirty little secrets they'd air out before the spell wore off. Hmm, it lasts a little over a month, depending on which month you're in. Heh, redefines the meaning of clean slate, I guess.  
  
"I'm in love with my horse." Ouch, that's a bad one. Too bad I couldn't see who said it.  
  
"I'm a member of the Black Ajah!" Not a clue what the Black Ajah is, but it got the short little brown haired woman startled glances, snarls, and a magical blow of white magic(that's what it appears to be, but I'm not sure) that knocked her out like a light. Must be pretty bad.   
  
The eight remaining sorceresses tried to argue over something, but they just kept on blurting out embarassing secrets. I whistled loudly to get their attention and said,"Have fun, ladies." Shields tight and layered, I shunted the sword into my spatial pocket and rose into the air. Levitation must be completely unknown here, because despite everything that had happened so far, the women looked at me in fear. Not shock, amazement, or even awe. Fear.   
  
I'm not complaining. With a final wave, I ascended out of sight.  
  
****  
  
Looking back on it, I probably should have waited to find out what they actually wanted with me before activating that spell. Oh well, it sure was funny. I guess they could have a precog somewhere that predicted my arrival. If that turns out to be true, I must do something pretty bad here to earn such an enthusiastic greeting. Maybe it's illegal here for men to use magic. Nah, not likely.  
  
Ascending out of sight, while normally a nice way to make an exit, becomes more of a spectacle when you're being struck by bolts of lightning, fireballs, and more fireballs. They really like those fireballs. The woman who acted as the Talent focus was fairly accurate and I was probably five hundred feet up before she started missing. None of her attacks had done more than dent my shields, but the enormous amount of noise and the bright lights ensured that anyone within a kilometer had seen me.   
  
So much for sleeping in an inn or hotel or whatever the things were called in this type of time period. Okay, big white tower of soreresses bitches, that one is off the list. Hmm, mega evil concentration way far away from here. There were a couple other magic center's much closer, and without actually having been to the place, I couldn't teleport to the evil one.   
  
And so, the journey begins...  
  
Hehehehe, doesn't sound too bad, eh?  
  
****  
  
"Wow, all this stuff is neat," Willow said as she and Ryoga helped Mamoru and his friends to sort through all the stuff they'd brought down in the cargo pods. The boy, Ryoga, was abnormally strong, abnormally in comparison to building smashing demons. Willow was equally strange, well strange if you thought that girls that did magic was strange. What was the world coming to?  
  
"Yeah, it was designed to work of the flux generators in space. Right now, it's the only way anyone can find to make technology work down here," Mamoru replied. Mamoru watched as Ryoga lifted a reinforced container that he knew weighed no less than three tons. It was also the size of a small car and empty."Ahh, just put that over there with the others." The others had been moved with help from the H.V.E.s and, of course, Ryoga. Was he some kind of magical warrior for love and justice, one without the annoying skimpy clothes?  
  
"No problem." Ryoga hefted the container of H.V.E. armor plating over his head and effortlessly carried it to the slowly forming pyramid of metal crates.  
  
"Mr. Chiba, do you think you'll be able to do anything for Buffy? That bite is bad," Willow said worriedly. Giant robots didn't normally fall out of the sky, and Willow thought she was handling the situation remarkably well. They weren't aliens, but the technology the men possessed was far more advanced than any she'd previously seen. Maybe Buffy would be alright.  
  
Mamoru shrugged."Burton is a great medic, he used to be a doctor, but I'm not sure about your friend, Willow. I can promise you that we'll do everything in out power to save her." Before Buffy had succumbed to her infection and gone into a comma, she too had been moving around massive objects, one-handed. Mamoru had watched the girl pitch a brick through a zombies head.  
  
Speaking of zombies. Were in hell had zombies come from?! Sure, he and the senshi had fought a horde or two of zombies, but those were just magically drained and controlled people. The zombies that he'd seen in the last couple days were REAL, flesh eating, living dead. One of the cargo pods had housed a load of automated light defense turrets. Those turrets currently formed a ring around the encampment and occassionally the *zap* *whoosh* of one firing on an animate corpse could be heard.  
  
****  
  
"Nerve gas, no, probably wouldn't work...Biotoxin P#453, nah, have to be alive for that stuff to work." Ryu continued to mumble to himself as he mentally catalogued the contents of the enormous bunker of various substances designed to kill people. He didn't hold much hope that any of the tanks would yield positive results, though.   
  
Enter Sho Fukamachi. Ryu had first thought the boy to be some sort of Umbrella super weapon. When they'd fought to a stale mate, Ryu'd been willing to listen to the thing's attempt at peacemaking. How was he supposed to know that it was just armor? The armor sure looked like something Umrbella would cook up.  
  
From swapped stories, Ryu and Sho managed to convince one another that Chronos and Umbrella were either one in the same, or competitors. Chronos had the more powerful, intelligent mutants, but Umbrella had the ability to turn the world's population into mindless zombies and raving mutants. Sho wasn't in his armor, thankfully. It still gave Ryu the creeps. Alien bio-weapon or not, it still reminded him of some of the horrors he'd encountered in Umbrella's Chinese mountain facility.  
  
"Anything worth bothering with?" Sho asked. The teenager, as weak and scrawny as most, didn't look very impressive, but with a single word, he could become most people's worst nightmare. Then again, there were people into that kind of thing.   
  
"I moved a few back towards the exit. They may be able to create a cloud of acid, but the identification was sorta vague. You?" Ryu finished, wiping dirt and spider webs from his synthetic hands.  
  
"There are plenty of nukes, but the damned things won't work." Sho wasn't in the best of moods. He hadn't been in a good mood for a while. He'd get Chronos, somehow, for fucking his life up. Now, with their processing facilities useless, and a powerful ally, he could see his dreams realized.  
  
Ryu hadn't really planned on using nuclear weapons. They tended to be more trouble than they were worth. He hadn't said anything to Sho about that when the kid had mentioned it because he didn't want to deal with the young fanatic any more than he had to. He shrugged."Don't worry about it. We've got the firepower to handle the job. It'll just take longer."  
  
****  
  
I might as well have been back on Earth for all the differences in this place. Earth was a little run down now, and most of the cities were abandoned by starving people returning to barbarism. Wherever 'here' was, I'd have to say that the people never really got out of the barbarian phase. Sure, there are some cities, and written language and all the essentials, but my definition of barbarism is just about anything short of tv and a microwave.  
  
There were lots and lots of trees, too. Chainsaws really are essential for a good round of deforestation. Once again, I'm not complaining. Fresh air and no electricity to interfere with my senses was nice. 


	9. Chapter 7

Now Pevara knew why she never bonded a warder. It wasn't the whole Red Ajah doesn't use warders 'rule', no, she didn't like pain. The emotional pain of a lost warder could drive a sister insane. The pain of a warder being beaten into a pulp, while physical and less intense than what the warder himself feels, was something she really wanted to avoid.  
  
"This is not going well," Sera snapped peevishly. Of course it wasn't going well, Pevara thought. The ter'angreal had indicated the prescense of active saidin very close to the Tower and the contingent sent to investigate it should have been enough to deal with anyone short of Rand al'Thor himself. Nine sisters and a dozen unbonded gaidin should have been able to deal with any single person on this planet, including Rand al'Thor, may the Dark One blast his soul!  
  
"It's the sword," gray-haired Noreata commented calmly. She was referring to the boy's sword, and what a weird sword it was. How had it been properly forged with all those curves in it?   
  
"Huh?" Pevara couldn't discern who'd grunted the question, but was relieved she herself hadn't needed to ask.  
  
"The sword, it is a ter'angreal. This boy has shown no actual chanelling ability. Every questionable action we've witnessed him commit has been recorded as effects of various ter'angreal. His sword must be extremely powerful to possess so many qualities." It was a possible scenario, but just as likely, the boy was a channeller with a funny sword.  
  
"I've never heard of a ter'angreal actually imparting a skill to its user before," Pevara said. Light, she hadn't meant to say that aloud!  
  
"You are correct in your assumption, Sitter Pevara." Noreata continued, "Though it is possible for there to be ter'angreal that could teach, I believe this one's weilder to be the holder of the skill."  
  
As Noreata finished speaking, the last gaidin still fighitng flew through the Spirit barrier that had resisted all attempts by the Aes Sedai to breach it.  
  
"The question you should be asking," the boy commented,"is how you're gonna take my sword from me."  
  
****  
  
Over the ring of steel on steel, I heard the gist of the sorceresses conversation. I didn't understand some of the words, but it was obvious they all thought my sword was the source of my power. Fools.  
"The question you should be asking," I said,"is how you're gonna take my sword from me." If they wanted to believe it, why should I tell them otherwise?  
  
"No one defies the Tower," gray hair said calmy, her deep eyes glinting like the broken blades lying at my feet. Tower? Shit! If these women were from 'that' tower, the one with the magic concentration, I couldn't expect any help from its residents. Stupid book, it could at least have had a warning about crazy psycho sorceress chicks.  
  
"I still don't understand what I've done to bother everyone so much, much less 'defy' the Tower." As I spoke, I was quietly manipulating a spell within my spatial pocket. It's harder to do this way, but I didn't want the women to know I was planning something. They may not even be sensitive to Talent, but it doesn't hurt to be cautious.  
  
By the time any of the sorcesses could think of anything to say, my spell had been cast. The gray haired woman opened her mouth and before she could say anything, a sing song voice completely at odds with her real voice said,"I have warts on my ass!" Hehehehe, and her mouth never even moved, except to open, of course.   
  
The woman's mouth snapped shut and she began to turn slightly pink. Her companions looked to be having trouble controlling themselves. One couldn't manage and bursted out laughing. As soon as her mouth opened, a voice not her won shouted,"I masturbate seventeen times a day!" She went straight to the purple range.  
  
"Um, that's nice, but I was wondering why I've been attacked without provocation." I'm proud of myself. I actually managed to say that with a straight face. The really great part of this spell is that it only speaks the truth. I wonder how many more dirty little secrets they'd air out before the spell wore off. Hmm, it lasts a little over a month, depending on which month you're in. Heh, redefines the meaning of clean slate, I guess.  
  
"I'm in love with my horse." Ouch, that's a bad one. Too bad I couldn't see who said it.  
  
"I'm a member of the Black Ajah!" Not a clue what the Black Ajah is, but it got the short little brown haired woman startled glances, snarls, and a magical blow of white magic(that's what it appears to be, but I'm not sure) that knocked her out like a light. Must be pretty bad.   
  
The eight remaining sorceresses tried to argue over something, but they just kept on blurting out embarassing secrets. I whistled loudly to get their attention and said,"Have fun, ladies." Shields tight and layered, I shunted the sword into my spatial pocket and rose into the air. Levitation must be completely unknown here, because despite everything that had happened so far, the women looked at me in fear. Not shock, amazement, or even awe. Fear.   
  
I'm not complaining. With a final wave, I ascended out of sight.  
  
****  
  
Looking back on it, I probably should have waited to find out what they actually wanted with me before activating that spell. Oh well, it sure was funny. I guess they could have a precog somewhere that predicted my arrival. If that turns out to be true, I must do something pretty bad here to earn such an enthusiastic greeting. Maybe it's illegal here for men to use magic. Nah, not likely.  
  
Ascending out of sight, while normally a nice way to make an exit, becomes more of a spectacle when you're being struck by bolts of lightning, fireballs, and more fireballs. They really like those fireballs. The woman who acted as the Talent focus was fairly accurate and I was probably five hundred feet up before she started missing. None of her attacks had done more than dent my shields, but the enormous amount of noise and the bright lights ensured that anyone within a kilometer had seen me.   
  
So much for sleeping in an inn or hotel or whatever the things were called in this type of time period. Okay, big white tower of soreresses bitches, that one is off the list. Hmm, mega evil concentration way far away from here. There were a couple other magic center's much closer, and without actually having been to the place, I couldn't teleport to the evil one.   
  
And so, the journey begins...  
  
Hehehehe, doesn't sound too bad, eh?  
  
****  
  
"Wow, all this stuff is neat," Willow said as she and Ryoga helped Mamoru and his friends to sort through all the stuff they'd brought down in the cargo pods. The boy, Ryoga, was abnormally strong, abnormally in comparison to building smashing demons. Willow was equally strange, well strange if you thought that girls that did magic was strange. What was the world coming to?  
  
"Yeah, it was designed to work of the flux generators in space. Right now, it's the only way anyone can find to make technology work down here," Mamoru replied. Mamoru watched as Ryoga lifted a reinforced container that he knew weighed no less than three tons. It was also the size of a small car and empty."Ahh, just put that over there with the others." The others had been moved with help from the H.V.E.s and, of course, Ryoga. Was he some kind of magical warrior for love and justice, one without the annoying skimpy clothes?  
  
"No problem." Ryoga hefted the container of H.V.E. armor plating over his head and effortlessly carried it to the slowly forming pyramid of metal crates.  
  
"Mr. Chiba, do you think you'll be able to do anything for Buffy? That bite is bad," Willow said worriedly. Giant robots didn't normally fall out of the sky, and Willow thought she was handling the situation remarkably well. They weren't aliens, but the technology the men possessed was far more advanced than any she'd previously seen. Maybe Buffy would be alright.  
  
Mamoru shrugged."Burton is a great medic, he used to be a doctor, but I'm not sure about your friend, Willow. I can promise you that we'll do everything in out power to save her." Before Buffy had succumbed to her infection and gone into a comma, she too had been moving around massive objects, one-handed. Mamoru had watched the girl pitch a brick through a zombies head.  
  
Speaking of zombies. Were in hell had zombies come from?! Sure, he and the senshi had fought a horde or two of zombies, but those were just magically drained and controlled people. The zombies that he'd seen in the last couple days were REAL, flesh eating, living dead. One of the cargo pods had housed a load of automated light defense turrets. Those turrets currently formed a ring around the encampment and occassionally the *zap* *whoosh* of one firing on an animate corpse could be heard.  
  
****  
  
"Nerve gas, no, probably wouldn't work...Biotoxin P#453, nah, have to be alive for that stuff to work." Ryu continued to mumble to himself as he mentally catalogued the contents of the enormous bunker of various substances designed to kill people. He didn't hold much hope that any of the tanks would yield positive results, though.   
  
Enter Sho Fukamachi. Ryu had first thought the boy to be some sort of Umbrella super weapon. When they'd fought to a stale mate, Ryu'd been willing to listen to the thing's attempt at peacemaking. How was he supposed to know that it was just armor? The armor sure looked like something Umrbella would cook up.  
  
From swapped stories, Ryu and Sho managed to convince one another that Chronos and Umbrella were either one in the same, or competitors. Chronos had the more powerful, intelligent mutants, but Umbrella had the ability to turn the world's population into mindless zombies and raving mutants. Sho wasn't in his armor, thankfully. It still gave Ryu the creeps. Alien bio-weapon or not, it still reminded him of some of the horrors he'd encountered in Umbrella's Chinese mountain facility.  
  
"Anything worth bothering with?" Sho asked. The teenager, as weak and scrawny as most, didn't look very impressive, but with a single word, he could become most people's worst nightmare. Then again, there were people into that kind of thing.   
  
"I moved a few back towards the exit. They may be able to create a cloud of acid, but the identification was sorta vague. You?" Ryu finished, wiping dirt and spider webs from his synthetic hands.  
  
"There are plenty of nukes, but the damned things won't work." Sho wasn't in the best of moods. He hadn't been in a good mood for a while. He'd get Chronos, somehow, for fucking his life up. Now, with their processing facilities useless, and a powerful ally, he could see his dreams realized.  
  
Ryu hadn't really planned on using nuclear weapons. They tended to be more trouble than they were worth. He hadn't said anything to Sho about that when the kid had mentioned it because he didn't want to deal with the young fanatic any more than he had to. He shrugged."Don't worry about it. We've got the firepower to handle the job. It'll just take longer."  
  
****  
  
I might as well have been back on Earth for all the differences in this place. Earth was a little run down now, and most of the cities were abandoned by starving people returning to barbarism. Wherever 'here' was, I'd have to say that the people never really got out of the barbarian phase. Sure, there are some cities, and written language and all the essentials, but my definition of barbarism is just about anything short of tv and a microwave.  
  
There were lots and lots of trees, too. Chainsaws really are essential for a good round of deforestation. Once again, I'm not complaining. Fresh air and no electricity to interfere with my senses was nice. 


End file.
